ANALYSIS
What Can We Expect From Qumar's Elections?
June 10, 2019
In 45 days, the work for creating a new constitution for the nation of Qumar will begin. The Middle Eastern nation's parliament, having been suspended since the utter collapse of the nation's government in 2016 amid the Bahji insurgency and invasion by its neighbor, Iran, will be reconstituted and tasked with creating a new constitution for the war-torn nation.
The surprising about-face of the Iranians—having gone from threatening any Qumari working to organize the election in Iranian-occupied territory, to openly working with authorities in Jabal Nafusah in a mad dash to reconstitute the nation's electoral registration database—has led to many Qumaris to feel cautiously optimistic that the results from next month's elections will truly mirror the national mood...
While some issues, such as the creation of a state wealth fund funded with revenue from the state ShareefPetro corporation, have been largely agreed upon—or in some cases, like a regime of international inspections meant to prevent the creation of nuclear weapons, mandated by the Iranian deal framework—other important issues will be hammered out when newly-elected legislators meet to discuss the new constitution.
The most salient issue will be if the nation will return to a monarchy or become a republic. Former Sultan Manab bin Hessani abdicated his throne on both his behalf and that of his family nearly three years ago, but in his exile in the United Arab Emirates, has stated he would return to the throne "if that is what the people of Qumar desire", but there is no guarantee that a monarchist restoration would return him to the throne. Of the seven sultans that have ruled Qumar since Mohammed bin Shareef overthrew the provisional government left behind by British authorities in 1936, only two (Shareef and his son, Ali Usef bin Shareef, who was overthrown by Hessani in 2007) have been from the same family.
But if the parliament decides instead to become a republic, then it will need to grapple with the question of whether the primary decision-maker should be the parliament or a president. While Qumar's history as a former British colony would seem to incline many towards the parliamentary model, American-style presidentialism also seems to be attractive to many Qumaris who fear a divided parliament could paralyze the nation just as it needs a stable hand at the till...
The issue of who Qumar's head of state will be decided, much like issues over the voting age for women (should it be lowered from 30 to 21 in order to match that for men?), religious education (should Qumari schools mandate Islamic teachings as part of their curriculum?), and issues arising from the Iranian occupation of northern Qumar (such as land titles abrogated by Iranian authorities or whose owners have disclaimed the land or passed with no heirs) will be decided by those from the parties that will contest the election:
The
Reform Party has existed alongside Qumar as an independent state, having been a rubber-stamp for every sultan until Ali Usef bin Shareef's was overthrow in 2007. Following that, it was turned into a vehicle for former prime minister and current chair of the Qumari Ruling Council, Zuben Ahmed. Ahmed, who briefly declared himself head of state after Hessani's abdication, is a notorious political survivor, having managed to survive multiple coup attempts, invasions and the occupation of his country to remain on the top of Qumari politics. Reform offers no position on the country's system of government—or on many of the hot-button constitutional issues for that matter. What Reform does promise is simple: lots of state-sponsored rebuilding, and the promise of a large hiring spree for the nation’s rebuilding civil service...
The former "second party" for Qumar, the
Conservative Party, has seen better days. Established as a pressure-valve used to placate religious hardliners and Islamist critics of the various sultans, the Conservatives have seen their numbers and prestige devastated since 2015, when prime minister Abdul Mikkuri was overthrown by moderate military leaders alarmed at his government's links to the Bahji. In the four years since, the party's leadership has been hollowed out, with most of Mikkuri's cabinet either imprisoned, fled abroad, or dead. Several more former party officials openly allied with the Bahji during the first phase of the current conflict, or were discovered to have links to Bahji leaders in the years since. Their current leader, Muhammad Farouk, is a respected former imam who lost his left foot after stepping on a land mine in 2017. The party is strongly in favor of religious education and favors reviving the sultanate in the hands of "a wise and observant man" chosen by parliament from a list of candidates drawn up by a panel made up of leaders of the largest mosque in each of the twelve most populous provinces...
With the splintering of the Conservatives, the
Qumari National Front (QNF) seems to have gained the most traction among secular nationalists opposed to the two major occupying nations—the United States and United Kingdom—who have no public plans to withdraw from Qumar after the election. The QNF's leader, Ismail Awad, has stated that American and British troops should leave Qumar within one month after the constitutional convention begins, following the example of China, which will withdraw all soldiers from Qumar by the end of July. Awad has since pushed back his proposed end-date for American and British involvement in Qumar, but remains adamantly opposed to continued foreign presence there....Surprisingly, the QNF is among the most liberal major parties on the issue of voting rights, proposing lowering the voting age to 18 for both men and women....
The
Democratic Reform Party (DRP), led by former Ahmed protégé Hassan Farhat, is the closest thing to a liberal Western party that is likely to win a seat in the new parliament, although it is more accurate to describe the party as being pro-democracy and technocratic. Farhat, who was in line to become prime minister before the country's collapse in 2016, moved decidedly away from Ahmed after the latter reneged on his planned political retirement to lead the interim government after Hessani's abdication. Farhat favors a constitutional monarchy with a strong judicial branch for Qumar's new system of government and is adamantly against mandating religious education in Qumari schools. The DRP is expected to do poorly outside of Jabal Nafusah and other major cities in Qumar, in spite of the party's ambitious plan to funnel more state funds into rural provinces in order to depress the number of potential recruits to the Bahji.
Unlike almost every other party running, the
Qumari Democratic Alliance (QDA) or
Talahuf (Arabic for "alliance") is a product of the occupation. Led by Ruling Council member Iyad Midani, Talahuf's political agenda is pro-business, favoring carve-outs in the regulatory and labor laws for "opportunity zones" in cities like Jasken and Himms to spur international investment, and has pushed to crush the nascent labor movement in Qumar (with state-controlled unions having suspended operations after the fall of the national government in 2016, labor organizers have managed to form independent labor unions for the first time in Qumari history) by outlawing unions except for those controlled by the company the employees work for, or the state itself. Talahuf's candidates, like Midani himself, are widely seen as being recipients of largesse from the Chinese occupying authorities, and it is clear that a considerable amount of funding for the party's campaign is coming from businessmen and entrepreneurs whose fortunes have been created or increased dramatically as a result of cooperation and partnership with Chinese businesses.
