Ruler says Qataris to vote on abandoning elections

Qatar's ruling emir says his small, energy-rich country will hold a referendum on ending a short-lived experiment in electing members of the country's advisory Shura Council.

Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani offered no immediate timeline for the referendum in an annual address to the Shura Council, which drafts laws, approves state budgets, debates major issues and provides advice to the ruler.

The body does not have sway over matters of defence, security and the economy.

However, it marks yet another rollback in the hereditarily ruled Gulf Arab states in its halting steps to embrace representational rule, however tentative, following efforts by the United States to push harder for democratic reforms in the Middle East after the September 11, 2001 attacks and hopes for democracy in the region rose after the 2011 Arab Spring.

From its perspective, Qatar saw the one-time 2021 vote likely as increasing tensions between tribes and families in the country just months after a diplomatic crisis between Doha and four Arab countries ended.

"We are all one family in Qatar," Sheikh Tamim said, according to a transcript published by the state-run Qatar News Agency.

"The contest between candidates for membership in the Shura Council took place within families and tribes, and there are different views regarding the repercussions of such competition on our norms, traditions, as well as the conventional social institutions and their cohesion."

The emir added: "The contest assumes an identity-based character that we are not equipped to handle, with potential complications over time that we would rather avoid."

The country's electoral law distinguishes between born and naturalised Qatari citizens and bars the latter from electoral participation.

Qatar first introduced plans for the legislative elections in its 2003 constitution but authorities repeatedly postponed the vote.

The country finally held the vote to elect two-thirds of the Shura Council in October 2021, just after the end of a boycott of Qatar by Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that tore the Gulf Arab states apart.

The vote also came about a year ahead of Qatar hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup, an event that drew intense international scrutiny to both Qatar's treatment of foreign labourers and its system of governance.

Qatar, like other Gulf Arab states, is ruled by a hereditary leader with ultimate say in how the country is governed.

Before the oil industry roared into the Gulf and upended hundreds of years of governance, rulers led by consensus among their people.