Not really. The population wants things, the wants coming from certain pretty clearly defined groups (mostly the tribes but also business and religious groups), for certain reasons, and uses certain tools to accomplish these goals. It’s not an arbitrary system, it’s pretty academic to figure it out, with both the ruling system’s functionality and legitimacy coming from the part where they are much better than what was there before.
And before you say the system could improve, every system can improve. If you introduce democracy to Saudi Arabia tomorrow, they’d just vote in a theocracy that would remove the democracy as quickly as possible. Or would just resort to tribal warfare like Libya is doing. This means there is no want for democracy in that system, and the system matters more than the individual when you’re a nation’s leader.
I’m not trying to excuse Saudi Arabia’s police state status but you have to realize that this dead king’s life work was successfully preventing wars inside his borders. We are used to leaders who write healthcare laws and then defend the budget of said healthcare law from congress. We don’t actually have to think about our leaders in terms of legitimacy vs violence or group representation vs individual rights. The scale of those mandates is enormously different.
Saudi Arabia beheaded 16 already this year, 4 under this new king. I like how it’s so bad when ISIS does it, but you can hear crickets when the Saudis do it.
Well, it is not that they behead them for petty crimes. Capital punishment executed under specific conditions, at least that was supposed to happen but there is an abuse to it by a number of incompetent judges.
I am extremely skeptic of their judicial system. When you have that type of authoritarian environment, it’s very easy to convict someone just because they are an obstacle to you in business or otherwise. That’s one of the major reasons monarchies don’t really exist around the world now. Tyrants are generally not known for being objective and fair.
If you look at the punishments they have, they are mostly pretty brutal and many things that aren’t crimes at all in a civilized society.
Like that one blogger that is supposed to get whipped what was it, 1000 times because he criticized the power structure in Saudi Arabia?
How can anyone say this is what the people want when they are silenced by violence?
The First Amendment was actually a huge, huge right. It will probably go away in the US at some point, and the government has always fought it at every turn after the Founding Fathers and their descendents in spirit also passed, heck while they were alive even. If you can silence any and all opposition, you can set the narrative any way you want. Every tyrant seeks to do this.
What are the people going to do? Complain they want democracy and then get whipped a thousand times, either be disfigured, maybe crippled, possibly die? You can’t say anything negative about the monarchs at all in Saudi Arabia. It’s an awful place. And people already know women can’t drive and all of that. SRK is incredibly misogynistic, but still you have to draw a line somewhere where it’s not even funny after you cross it.
I hate that country and their stupid tyrant royalty. Awful, awful place.
I agree that the judicial system is vague and need a lot of refinement. In a lot of cases , the judicial system is not fair and it is subject to the ministry of interior wishes. There is in fact a law that states that if a citizen criticizes the King or the crown prince, or a royal official that has power, that act may be considered a crime worthy of up to 10 years in prison.
There are a lot of vague things that don’t make sense that often treated as evidence which lead to convictions . The reasoning behind some judgments are unclear.
I agree, they claim that they fellow Islam teaching but the reality is far from it. The highest amount of lashes is Islam should be no more than a 100 lashes and it should not be strong hits that harm the body, what matter is the humiliating experience that teach the convicted to never commit the crime again. This judgment is done as a punishment for specific crimes under specific conditions. But what they do right now is free judgment based on unrestricted judicial assessments.
It is not as bad as it looks, it is actually alright to some degree provided that you have high degree of tolerance . I know this because I was born there.
weird coincidence. ran into a saudi at a karaoke bar last night, and even while on the other side of the world, drinking cognac and smoking cigarettes, he said he was happy with the monarchy and wasn’t interested in a democratic Saudi Arabia. dont mean to make a case one way or another, just thought it was strangely apropos.
same thing I was thinking. when the government has that much leverage over its citizens, its hard to believe everyone is happy with it even if they say they are.
When Saudi Arabia had protests, the population’s rights expanded. When Iran had protests, there was a crackdown and access to free information became more difficult to access.
Saudi Arabia is also quite a bit richer than Iran (thanks a lot to the cozy relationship between Saudi and the US). Its not a perfect correlation but there seems the richer a country is, the better off its populace is…
Aren’t rights for Asian expat workers in the Gulf notoriously poor?
Also Saudi Arabia helped neighbouring Bahrain brutally crackdown on democracy protests there. The fact that the police actually invaded a hospital… just wow.
