Issue 862, 9 October 2009

Al-Wefaq caught between clever government and growing opposition as electioneering begins

The mainstream Shia parliamentary opposition appears to have become sidetracked by marginal and sectarian issues, and is now caught between a tactically astute government and vigorous rivals

As Bahrain’s Crown Prince Salman Bin Hamad Al-Khalifa presses ahead with an assiduous round of personal networking in preparation for next year’s national elections, the island’s beleaguered parliamentary opposition is struggling to retain the support of its voters.

Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society has managed to extract only one major concession from government as a reward for its high-risk decision to join the constitutional parliamentary system three years ago – Shias’ exemption from the new personal status law. It is under pressure from the non-sectarian Haq movement, led by the hugely popular veteran campaigner Hassan Mushaima, and is now threatened by a dynamic new rival: Al-Wefaa, a new Shia movement led by the high-profile political Islamist Abdelwahab Hussein and the senior cleric Sheikh Abduljalil Al-Mukhdad.

In the 2006 election, Al-Wefaq and its political leader, Sheikh Ali Salman, could count on the support of much of the Shia religious establishment because Sheikh Issa Qassim, Bahrain’s most senior Shia cleric, is the society’s spiritual figurehead. But Al-Wefaa’s Al-Mukhdad is almost as senior. Moreover, the new movement is already working closely with Haq. Although Mushaima’s personal politics are Islamist, he has, as foreshadowed in remarks to GSN, decided to stay with Haq (GSN 857/6). “Haq is a mixture of people – Sunni, Shia, leftist, Islamist – whereas Al-Wefaa is mostly Shia Islamist,” said an independent Bahrain observer.

Al-Wefaa is expected to join calls for a boycott of the election, but if it stands, it would pose problems for Al-Wefaq by splitting the Shia vote. Al-Wefaq leaders have now admitted that they can achieve little through the parliamentary system: the authorities have inflated the mainly pro-government Sunni electorate with foreigners, while electoral boundaries are tilted to favour the Sunnis and leave the Shia under-represented. And the Shura Council upper house has the casting vote over the elected National Assembly.

However, Al-Wefaq has decided it will remain in the assembly and stand in the elections, arguing that doing so allows its senior figures to meet ministers and foreign dignitaries and press their views.

Tarred with the insider brush

Crown Prince Salman visited the Majlis of Issa Qassim during Ramadan, as he did during the run-up to the elections of 2006. However, such encounters foster an impression that Al-Wefaq is being sucked into the establishment. Its actions and misjudgements have compounded the impression of ineffectiveness, self-interest and loss of momentum. In June, Al-Wefaq was the only political group in favour of a new government pension scheme that was attacked by all the other groups in the Assembly, as well as its allies outside parliament in the liberal National Democratic Action Society (NDAS, Waad). In wider political terms, its stance on pensions was almost guaranteed to cost the society dear. A movement that three years ago triumphantly burst into parliament as the biggest bloc with 17 of the 40 seats now risks a vertiginous drop in popularity.

Al-Wefaq is also under pressure from the Shia “street” to include prominent liberals such as Ibrahim Sharif and Munira Fakhro of the NDAS as candidates. They have become increasingly popular because of their focus on issues such as land, employment and the award of Bahraini nationality to large numbers of Sunnis recruited from abroad to serve in the security forces. Such action would help to revive Al-Wefaq’s once broad appeal.

But the society’s leaders seem reluctant to bring in liberals because of the example set by Aziz Abul, a former president of the vigorously independent Bahrain Centre for Human Rights. He was elected as parliament’s sole liberal in 2006, with Al-Wefaq support. But he has edged steadily closer to government and is now expected to be appointed to the Majlis ash-Shura upper house.

Government manoeuvres

The government’s clever political manoeuvring has helped to box Al-Wefaq into a corner. Its redrawing of the personal status law – which reinforces women’s basic social, legal and economic rights, particularly in divorce – to exempt Shias led campaigners to complain that Shia women would be less protected. While this was a concession to Al-Wefaq, cynics suggest the government has encouraged the impression that Shias are socially backward.

The government’s only other major concession of recent months, a ban on alcohol and live entertainment in the one and two star hotels that lure Saudi weekend visitors with access to alcohol and prostitutes, was also a response to pressure from parliamentary Islamists. Al-Wefaq’s support for the move may again have pushed it away from its core agenda of economic and political rights.

Crown Prince Salman is playing an increasingly important role in shaping a political strategy that seeks to divide the opposition and nudge it away from its main reform agenda, while positioning the government as the provider of moderate socio-economic change that leaves the ruling Al-Khalifa family’s political power intact. The heir apparent is strengthening his influence on policy and his role as the bridge between wider society and the often low-profile King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa. His role on the Economic Development Board – which has worked with other ministries and the private sector to develop the government’s 2030 strategy – gives him influence across a wide range of policy areas. Studiously ignoring core opposition complaints over Sunni immigration and constitutional issues, Sheikh Salman is emerging as the face of cautious engagement and compromise that aims to placate a range of constituencies.

The Crown Prince has left others to take the heat on difficult economic issues. For example, Labour Minister Majeed Al-Alawi has been left to put the case for the abolition of the sponsorship system, which should improve the competitiveness and flexibility of the employment market and bolster migrant rights – but at the price of antagonising some domestic vested interests. Al-Wefaq has raised concerns, again aligning itself with the old guard while the government acts as moderniser.

Foreign affairs

The conservative current within Shia thinking can be seen in foreign affairs. Talking to GSN recently, Sheikh Mohammed Habib Al-Mukhdad, president of the Al-Zahraa Society for Orphan Care and a prominent Shia voice, was strikingly supportive of the Iranian government’s post-election crackdown on opponents in Tehran this summer. That view, like that on the personal status law, helps the government to persuade Western allies that the Shia opposition is dangerous and obscurantist and that they should, therefore, turn a blind eye to police crackdowns and electoral gerrymandering.

In recent months, Crown Prince Salman has taken the courting of Western, and particularly US, opinion to another level by repositioning Bahrain as a key advocate for dialogue with Israel, and the education of Arab opinion on the case for peace – setting out his views through an op-ed article in the Washington Post in July. Domestic critics are unconvinced. One told GSN that Bahrainis used to look to Sheikh Salman as the reformist who would “come in on a white horse” to save the country from deadlock. In fact, he had bought into the old ruling system, said the critic. But, whatever the criticism, Sheikh Salman has played a shrewd game, positioning himself as the government’s face of dialogue and modernisation, and outflanking his uncle, the avowedly conservative veteran Prime Minister Sheikh Khalifa Bin Salman Al-Khalifa.