Talking Point

Some recent comments prompt me to offer a long due clarification on a few issues.

As the Special Majlis debate on transitional arrangements approaches, it is seminal that a detailed framework to base that debate is put together and made available. A broad framework like that which suggests options, strategies, tasks and timelines (collectively referred to as the transitional arrangements) is important to act as a basis for the debate and to steer it forward, and to make the debate a focused and substantive exercise. Otherwise the debate can be pulled in all forms of meaningless directions.

Most of the comments on the post “As Debate Approaches on Transition Arrangements” are formed around one phrase that I used in that post. The phrase is “Stranger to the Majlis”.

“To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves” is a quotation from Claude - Adrien Helvétius on the significance of free expression. Today, I use the phrase on fools or slaves in a totally different context. I use that phrase in context of the Special Majlis debate on the president’s chapter.

Monday, 14 January 2008, in debating the chapter on the President, the Special Majlis adopted an amendment proposed and seconded by members linked to the government that a president can serve only two terms under “this constitution” whether computed consecutively or otherwise and that each term shall be five years. It was adopted by 66 votes put in by members linked to the government. Prior to the amendment, the draft clause had no reference to the words “this constitution” and the draft could have therefore blocked the current president from running again.

Colleagues, associates, journalists, and friends kept telling me of those rumors over my apparent resignation and the various theories floated around for my disappearance for most part of the past week.