The elections to the Central Municipal Council (CMC) ended last week with surprises in a number of constituencies. This is the sixth democratic experience in Qatar and comes every four years.
But with 20 years of experience, we have to re-evaluate the process at the level of laws, practice and our ambitions. There is no doubt that people’s awareness of this electoral experience is becoming a bit negative for several reasons, the most important being a lack of awareness about the Council’s powers. People expect it to do more than its capabilities. Moreover, the absence of a headquarters for members affects their efficiency, making some members disappear for long period. This is hampering their performance.
I suggest the following for the improvement of the council and its operations:
First, CMC members must have a permanent seat in the concerned municipalities or at a service centre in the department, provided that he or she is present at least twice a week. The members also must have a website and active accounts on social networking sites.
Telecasting the sessions of the Council either on official television or through an official channel of the Council or on YouTube would be advisable so people can follow their members and assess their performance.
Second, the Election Committee, which works only every four years, performs very poorly. It barely fulfills its duty and does not meet all the requirements as a real committee that is behind the sole democratic experiment in the country.
This committee decided before the fifth election to redistribute the districts. All the lists were cancelled and people were asked to register again. Many lost their registration. The call to register was made through traditional media, without a massive campaign. Moreover, there was a lack of coordination among various agencies to ensure the full dissemination of information and the candidates have suffered greatly due to difficulties in getting permission because of inadequate information in each municipality.
There is a need for a plan to raise people’s awareness through a four-year media campaign that will run until the next election.
There is also a need for better coordination with the concerned authorities so that the electoral permits of the candidates are ready on the day of filing of their nominations. They must complete the nomination process, like appeals and the adoption of final names, at least six months before the election so that candidates can prepare an excellent campaign and be armed with a clear plan of action. The electoral lists of voters must be published at least four months in advance to allow candidates to review the list and sort out the anomalies.
There should be a training programme for candidates, which must be made compulsory, and must include definition of the council’s laws, terms of reference, election campaign conditions and the art of dealing with the media, exactly as is the case in other countries.
Third, since we have made great strides in education, it is unreasonable to make it one of the conditions for candidacy, after 20 years of starting this election, that a member must be able to read and write. This condition was appropriate at the time of starting the election process and there were people in their fifties who could only read and write. But in this age, it is not reasonable in Qatar to expect a candidate to only read and write, and this is not appropriate in this era of rapid information flow. I think the candidates should have a minimum qualification of a high secondary school certificate.
Fourth, people cannot tolerate the repetition of faces in the elections, and in the absence of a limit on the maximum number of times a candidate can get elected continuously, many people are disappointed with electoral participation. They know that a certain person will win because of his tribal strength or family network and this prevents other candidates from running in the election.
The duration of council representation shall be limited to eight years, continuously, and the member shall be entitled to nominate himself again only after a gap of another eight years.
This article does not mention everything, especially regarding citizenship and the equality in the nomination process and other such issues.
In any case, one of the most important things that must be done, and I find it the responsibility of the next president of the Council or the Secretary-General of the Council, is to re-evaluate the media strategy of the Council. The spending of the Council for the election was huge, but the election got the worst coverage on social networking sites. The municipality had previously been lax about raising awareness about the need to register or re-enrollment or even in promoting the election, as if this does not matter at all.