5 Emiratis Arrested for "Threatening UAE Security"

Five Emirati citizens have been arrested over the month of April for supposedly creating a security threat for the UAE government.
The actual crime these five Emiratis are being accused of is not a conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism or a plot to commit fraud, but instead, these five citizens are facing imprisonment and heavy fines for "crimes including insulting the President, Vice President, and Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi.
Salim Saeed Kubaish, the Attorney General of the Emirates, said that the five were being investigated for "crimes of instigation, breaking the law and perpetrating acts that pose threats to state security," among other reasons.
One of the Emiratis arrested, Abdullah al Shehi, is the head of a group, the Al Shahouh Folklore Society, which has petitioned for universal suffrage in the upcoming FNC elections.
These arrests are a sure sign that the UAE is not as free as it may appear on the surface. Although it is considerably liberal when compared to some of the other Middle Eastern nations, the UAE is still clearly not one of the countries looking for a complete democratic political system.

The "Emiratisation" of the Workforce

A big domestic issue within the UAE is the demographics within the workforce. The Emirates have long been an accessible place for foreign workers to find a job regardless of nationality, ethnicity, or religion. The accessibility of work in the UAE is a key reason for the fact that only 20% of the people living in the Emirates are actually citizens. Due to this small percentage of native Emirati people that can be a part of the work force, the UAE government decided that something needed to be done to help the natives and citizens of the Emirates.

Saqr Gobash Saeed Gobash, the Minister of Labour, outlined a new labor policy that focuses on workers' rights and the "Emiritisation" of the work force. Gobash explained that Emiratisation is the process in which the hiring of local workers becomes a priority, and as a result, more citizens get hired over foreign workers. Gobash stated that the way this process will be further implemented was to give incentives to companies that hire qualified local help instead of looking for foreigners who are qualified for the same job.

Another aspect of the policies was the protection of workers' rights. Minister Gobash ensured that the new policies were meant to protect ALL workers, regardless of nationality. The policies would, however, make switching jobs more flexible for locals, while foreign workers would have to commit to working for their "sponsor" employers for a set period of 2 years.

Gobash's main goal with these policies is to "create a safe, monitored, well organised labour market will help in boosting the country's economy and stability."

Rules of the FNC Election

Yesterday, Dr Anwar Mohammad Gargash, the State Minister for FNC Affairs made a statement to the people of the United Arab Emirates regarding the amount of people allowed to vote as a part of the Electoral Colleges in September's Federal National Council elections.

According to Gargash, a decree made by President Khalifa in 2005 establishes a minimum number of people needed to be a legitimate election, which is at least 300 times the number of representatives. This decree, however, does not include a maximum amount of people that can be involved in the elections.

The program for politcal empowerment outlined by President Khalifa is meant to eventually allow every Emerati the right to be involved in the elections, whether as a voter or a candidate. This change is meant to be gradual, however, and even as the Electoral College gets to vote and decide on 20 of the 40 members of the FNC, the other 20 representatives are still chosen by the respective rulers of the Emirates.

What I found interesting about this article is that, on the surface, the UAE seems to be a fairly democratic country with plenty of voting rights, and for the most part, that is the case. Underneath that democratic exterior, however, it becomes apparent that when it comes to wielding the power in the UAE, the rulers of the Emirates are the ones in charge and calling the shots.

Technology and Innovation

Here's something interesting I found regarding the development of technology in the UAE, and more specifically the development of broadband internet within the Emirates. The Emirates Telecommunications Corporation, or etisalat, is going to be investing $15 billion over the next 5 years to expand the broadband network of the Emirates and other countries in the region.
The money being invested is going towards purchasing things like fiber optics cables, which increase the potential bandwidth of the network.
The UAE hopes to have 100% broadband penetration by 2012, and by doing so, hopes to expand markets such as banking and tourism. On top of hoping for complete penetration, the UAE government has committed to continuously expand the country's broadband capabilities.

FNC Elections Scheduled

The National Election Commission (NEC), an independent agency of the UAE goverment has released the schedule for the election cycle of the Federal National Council (FNC) this year, with the actual elections taking place on September 24th.
Surprisingly, the election process of the FNC is similar to that of the U.S. The biggest similarity is that, like the U.S., there is an Electoral College that actually votes for the representatives, but in the UAE, each individual emirate has its own Electoral College, and each is treated as a seperate entity.
The NEC is in charge of ensuring the legitimacy of the election, and also looking into any potential incidents of voter fraud. In fact the NEC is in charge of running the entire election process, including notifying the members of the respective Electoral Colleges of any additions or withdrawls to the candidate lists.

UAE Taking Note of Japan's Crisis

In the wake of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the Japanese coast last week, the government of the UAE is watching very closely as the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Since the UAE is beginning to develop a nuclear energy program, this crisis presents an unfortunate, yet very valuable learning experience as to how to bolster the safety of the world's nuclear plants.
Ambassador Hamad Al Kaabi, the UAE's permanent representative to the IAEA, made some comments regarding the possible lessons learned and how the UAE will move forward in the construction of their own nuclear power plants. According to Al Kaabi, it will take some time before effective conclusions can be met, as the crisis is still unfolding. However, with the UAE government set to build 4 nuclear power plants around the various emirates, the first of which should provide Abu Dhabi with power by 2017, and to have those plants produce 25% of the country's energy by 2020, the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC) and the Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation (FANR) are going to do everything necessary to ensure that the situation in Japan doesn't repeat itself in the UAE.

UAE and Energy

Hello everyone,
This week is all about energy. The UAE government has planned to invest $74 billion in energy for the period of 2011-2015. This puts the UAE as the second largest energy investor in the region behind Saudi Arabia.
On a similar note, the UAE government has considered two options to meet their increasing energy demands that can't currently be met by the UAE's current output.
The first solution is a power link between the city of Dubai and Iran. Currently only a discussion, this power link would be placed beneath the sea floor and funnel energy directly into Dubai. It has been stressed that this link would only apply to "direct current," but would still help meet Dubai's growing power demands due to the increase in infrastructure still taking place.
The second solution is for the UAE to start a nuclear power program. Also currently just a discussion, the implementation of nuclear power is being explored throughout the entire Gulf Coast region of the Middle East. Ambassador Hamad Al Kaabi, the UAE's permanent representative to the IAEA has been, in a way, heading up the operation/ discussion for this implementation for the the developing GCCs. According to Kaabi, even solar, wind, and other alternative energy sources are only going to solve a part of the energy problem in the Middle East.

Banks Expected to Grow in 2011

There seems to be some evidence that the economic problems the UAE has been facing since the real estate crisis might be slowly getting better.

I found this article, which explains how some of the major banks in the UAE are actually projecting growth for the first time since the collapse of the real estate market. I found this really interesting because the article details how the bankers and businesses brought the various banks back from the brink of collapse. My favorite part of the growth is that the bankers managed to eliminate bad loans and become profitable through "declining loan losses and portfolio impairments and rising liquidity resulting from improving deposits."

Background Information

I figured as a starting point it would be nice to provide some background on the history of the UAE.

The UAE was founded in 1971, but the roots of the nation go farther back than that.
         In the 16th century, the entire region of the Arabian Peninsula came under the control of Portugal and would remain that way over 150 years. Then, in the 17th and 18th centuries, the area became part of the Ottoman Empire. At this point, and even until the UAE came into being, the area was known as either the Trucial Sheikhdoms or the Trucial States. This is because of the 9 emirates that existed in the area (7 of them being a part of the UAE today). Anyway, during the 19th century, in order to secure a shipping route to India for spices, Britain and the various Sheikhs signed a treaty to protect the shipping route around the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf from raiders and pirates.
          In the 1960s, the emirates struck it big by discovering oil, making them a very wealthy country. The first shipment of crude oil left the port of Abu Dhabi (the capital of the UAE) in 1962. In 1971 when the treaty between Britain and the emirates expired, the emirates decided to try and form a union containing the 9 sheikdoms. This plan worked for the most part, as 7 emirates joined together to form the United Arab Emirates. The most powerful of these emirates are Abu Dhabi (national capital) and Dubai (financial center).
Since 1990, the UAE has experience a boom in tourism, partly due to Dubai's many attractions, including the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, which is 2717 ft tall. Dubai's buildup of real estate has allowed the country to start moving away from being an oil based economy. During the 2008-2009 financial crisis, however, Dubai took a big hit after the real estate market crash. Many construction projects were cancelled and the property value in Dubai dropped. Despite this, the UAE still pushes for innovation and development.

Welcome

Welcome to my case study of the United Arab Emirates.