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Bahrain The Constitutional Experiment
On December 16, 1971, the day Bahrain formally became
independent of Britain (Bahrain technically gained its
independence earlier in the year, on August 15), Shaykh
Isa ibn
Salman announced that the country would have a
constitutional
form of government. Six months later, he issued a decree
providing for the election of representatives to a
Constituent
Assembly, charged with drafting and ratifying a
constitution. The
assembly was to consist of twenty-two elected delegates
plus
twenty additional members, including eight delegates
appointed by
the amir and the twelve members at the time of the Council
of
Ministers. The election, which was held in December 1972,
was the
first national election in Bahrain's history. The
electorate was
restricted, however, to native-born male citizens aged
twenty
years and older.
The relative openness of political debate permitted
during
the election campaign for the twenty-two contested
Constituent
Assembly seats encouraged individuals dissatisfied with
the lack
of democratic rights to demand more civil liberties. The
primary
focus of concern was the 1965 Law of Public Security, a
series of
three amiri decrees that authorized the ruler to maintain
indefinitely a virtual state of emergency in order to
protect
national security from suspected foreign and domestic
enemies. A
group of mostly university-educated professionals, led by
Abd al
Aziz Shamlan, unsuccessfully petitioned the amir to
rescind the
law's harshest provisions, especially those pertaining to
arrest
and detention. They believed these measures had been used
arbitrarily to silence dissent and peaceful opposition.
Several
women's groups also organized to protest the exclusion of
women
from the franchise. They presented a petition to the amir
requesting support for extending voting rights to female
citizens, but they failed to receive a positive response.
The Constituent Assembly was in session during most of
1973.
It approved a constitution of 108 articles. The
constitution,
enacted by amiri decree in December 1973, provided for an
advisory legislative body, the National Assembly,
consisting of
thirty members elected for four-year terms, plus all the
members
of the Council of Ministers whose terms were not fixed.
The
assembly was not empowered to initiate or enact
legislation, but
it was authorized to give advice and consent to laws
proposed by
the Council of Ministers. The assembly had the right to
question
individual ministers about policies and to withdraw
confidence
from any minister except the prime minister. The
constitution
stipulated that the amir could dissolve the assembly at
his
discretion, provided he make public the grounds for so
doing. If
the assembly were dissolved by decree, new elections had
to take
place within two months or the dissolution would be
invalidated
and the dismissed members reinstated.
Election for the National Assembly took place in
December
1973, with the franchise restricted, as in the Constituent
Assembly election, to male citizens. In theory, the thirty
elected representatives were independents because
political
parties were not permitted; in practice, several of the
assemblymen openly supported the positions and views of
banned
political organizations, including the National Front for
the
Liberation of Bahrain, which espoused Marxist economic
ideas.
Consequently, two distinct coalitions emerged in the
assembly:
the People's Bloc, consisting of eight members who
advocated the
legalization of labor unions and the abolition of the 1965
security measures; and the Religious Bloc, consisting of
six Shia
members who supported labor reforms and various social
restrictions, such as a ban on the sale of alcoholic
beverages.
The majority of elected members--sixteen representatives--
comprised a heterogeneous group of independents whose
individual
positions shifted with the issues. The People's Bloc and
the
Religious Bloc tended to refer to the independents
pejoratively
as the Government Bloc because they usually tried to
effect
compromises between the ministers and their National
Assembly
critics.
Although the National Assembly lacked authority to
prevent
the government from enacting legislation that assembly
members
opposed, this situation did not impede policy debates. The
unprecedented public debates attracted wide interest and,
from
the perspective of the regime, seemed to erode its
legitimacy.
During the winter and spring of 1975, a prolonged debate
over a
new state security decree proved especially troubling for
the
government. It appeared that most independents, as well as
the
Religious Bloc, supported the demand of the People's Bloc
that
the decree, issued in December 1974 without prior
consultation
with the assembly, be submitted to the legislature for
ratification before its implementation. The issue was
unresolved
in May 1975, when the assembly recessed for the summer. In
August, before the members reconvened, the amir dissolved
the
National Assembly, citing its inability to cooperate with
the
government. Although the constitution stipulated that new
elections had to take place within two months of a
dissolution,
this did not occur. One year later, in August 1976, Shaykh
Isa
ibn Salman announced that the National Assembly would
remain
dissolved indefinitely.
Although there are no political parties through which
citizens can express views, they can petition the amir for
redress of grievances. The amir holds a regular majlis, or
public
meeting, at which he listens to views of citizens and
accepts
petitions for his intervention in dealing with the
bureaucracy or
some other problem. Officials of the islands' eleven
municipalities follow the amir's example and hold local
versions
of the national majlis.
Data as of January 1993
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