Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
06RIYADH5173
2006-06-30 07:22:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Riyadh
Cable title:  

A TALE OF TWO MUNICIPAL COUNCILS: THE DIVERGING

Tags:  PGOV KDEM SA 
pdf how-to read a cable
VZCZCXRO5632
PP RUEHDE
DE RUEHRH #5173/01 1810722
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 300722Z JUN 06
FM AMEMBASSY RIYADH
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 9066
INFO RUEHZM/GULF COOPERATION COUNCIL COLLECTIVE
RUEHLO/AMEMBASSY LONDON 2666
RUEHFR/AMEMBASSY PARIS 0604
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 RIYADH 005173 

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DHAHRAN SENDS
PARIS FOR ZEYA, LONDON FOR TSOU

E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/27/2016
TAGS: PGOV KDEM SA
SUBJECT: A TALE OF TWO MUNICIPAL COUNCILS: THE DIVERGING
PATHS OF DAMMAM AND QATIF

REF: 2005 RIYADH 9402

Classified by Consul General John Kincannon for reasons 1.4
(b) and (d).

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 RIYADH 005173

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DHAHRAN SENDS
PARIS FOR ZEYA, LONDON FOR TSOU

E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/27/2016
TAGS: PGOV KDEM SA
SUBJECT: A TALE OF TWO MUNICIPAL COUNCILS: THE DIVERGING
PATHS OF DAMMAM AND QATIF

REF: 2005 RIYADH 9402

Classified by Consul General John Kincannon for reasons 1.4
(b) and (d).


1. (C) Summary: Six months after the SAG announced its
appointees to the municipal councils (reftel),the
experiences of the Greater Dammam Municipal Council (GDMC)
and the Qatif Municipal Council (QMC) illustrate two
diverging paths in this experiment in partially elected local
government. The GDMC is moving slowly, to the apparent
frustration of its elected members. The appointed
technocrats seem to have the upper hand, acting as a
moderating influence between the controlling instincts of the
mayor and the demanding if unorganized elected members. The
dynamics on the QMC are markedly different: the
well-organized elected members have the upper hand and are
actively pressing ahead with a clear agenda. Their first
order of business is to wrest control of Qatif's municipal
budget from the Mayor of the Eastern Province, and they have
mounted a coordinated lobbying campaign to achieve this goal.
In the end, however, both councils will face the same two
challenges: limited institutional authority and dependence on
Riyadh for their municipal budgets. End summary.


2. (U) This cable draws on conversations with nine elected
and appointed members from the two councils. We have
reported some of these conversations previously in 2005
RIYADH 8323, 9401, and 9434; and 2006 RIYADH 657, 1741, 3673,
3974, 4627, and 5036.

--------------
GDMC: "Slowly Setting the Base"
--------------


3. (C) In separate meetings with the CG on June 24 and 25,
Dr. Abdullah Al-Kadi and Ehsan Abdul Jawad, both appointed
members of the Greater Dammam Municipal Council, told the CG
that the council was slowly developing. "We are setting the
base for the next council in four years time," offered Abdul
Jawad, a U.S.-trained engineer and businessman. "The council
hasn't done anything useful yet for society at large, but it
will," said Al-Kadi, a U.S.-trained architect and urban
planner. Both identified the same two challenges facing the
council. First, members had to learn about municipal

administration from scratch. "It's not like running a
business," Abdul Jawad noted ruefully, explaining that the
finance and technical committees were just starting to
understand how their respective areas worked at the
municipality, four months into their tenure. Al-Kadi said
that he had proposed, and the Ministry of Municipalities had
agreed to, a one-day training in September for all of Saudi
Arabia's municipal council members, to give them the tools to
be effective in their jobs. Abdul Jawad noted that the
slowness of the process was particularly frustrating for
elected members, who came to the council under pressure to
deliver on their campaign platforms.


4. (C) The other challenge both members raised was the
relationship between the mayor and the council. Abdul Jawad
confirmed what one of the elected members alleged to us
(reftel),namely that the Mayor of the Eastern Province (EP),
Dhaifallah Al-Otaibi, had tried to take control of the
council. "As soon as we were appointed," Abdul Jawad said,
"the mayor called me up and asked me to vote for him as
president of the council so that the elected members didn't
take it over. I told him that he should not be both mayor
and president of the council, and I wouldn't vote for him.
So we agreed to support another appointed member, Khalid
Al-Falih." Despite the mayor's wish to dominate the council,
Al-Kadi noted, the other members had "insisted he was just
one of us, just like the rest." Abdul Jawad said that
Al-Otaibi had initially been very defensive about criticism
and unwilling to give out information, but that he and his
subordinates in the municipality were slowly becoming more
forthcoming. Because of the antagonism between the mayor and
the elected members, Abdul Jawad continued, he thought it was
necessary that for the council's first term that half of the
members had been appointed.


5. (C) Khalifa Al-Dossary, one of the elected members of the
council and its highest vote-getter, has confirmed to us on
several occasions the antagonism between Mayor Al-Otaibi and
the elected members. In Al-Dossary's view, the mayor,
supported by the appointed members, is not relinquishing any
control and is not open to proposals from the members.
Khalifa and his brother Yousef plan to attack the mayor

RIYADH 00005173 002 OF 003


through relentless questioning in the GDMC and in the EP
Chamber of Commerce & Industry, where Yousef is a board
member. The elected members, however, have diverging goals
and agendas and were not able to block Al-Falih's election as
president as the compromise choice of the mayor and the
appointed members. Al-Falih, a career Saudi Aramco employee
seen by many as the fastest rising star at Saudi Aramco and a
potential future CEO of the company, has both his defenders
and detractors. He is an enormously capable executive, yet
the limited time he can free up from his demanding duties at
Aramco make it difficult for him to be an effective head of
the council. Some of the elected members see a type of
collaboration between Al-Falih and Al-Otaibi (himself a
retired Aramco executive) to "run the municipal council like
Aramco." The mayor, for his part, told the CG that some of
the elected members were "not of high quality" and expressed
his indignation that, having won an election, they wanted to
make decisions. Given the dynamics on the council, it is not
surprising that the council has not been successful in
reaching out to the public to date. A recent half-hearted
effort at a town meeting resulted in a mostly empty hall, and
when Najeeb Al-Zamil, a well-connected socialite, organized a
forum to give Mayor Al-Otaibi a chance to present his plans
for Greater Dammam, none of the municipal council members
came.

-------------- --------------
Qatif: Reaching Out to the Grassroots and the Center
-------------- --------------


6. (C) Led by its well-organized elected members, a group of
Shi'a activists and professionals with strong and overlapping
community ties, the QMC has acted with a much more united
front. As soon as the appointed members and by-laws were
announced, the elected members coalesced around Jafar
Al-Shayeb and subsequently won his election as president. Of
the four elected members we have met with, three have
advanced degrees from the U.S. and all four are professionals
with technical backgrounds who run their own businesses.
They quickly formed committees and identified several
priorities. Perhaps the most interesting of these priorities
is wresting control of Qatif's budget from none other than EP
Mayor Dhaifallah Al-Otaibi. Although Qatif has its own mayor
who sits as an appointed member on the QMC, the budget for
Qatif is determined by the Mayor of the EP, who is
responsible for the budgets of Greater Dammam (Dammam,
Khobar, and Dhahran) and Qatif. According to elected QMC
member Riyadh Al-Mustafa, this situation is unique in the
Kingdom: all other municipalities with municipal councils
receive their budgets directly from the Ministry of
Municipalities. "I know Al-Otaibi and have talked with him
personally, but he refuses to give up control," added
Al-Mustafa.


7. (C) QMC members have launched a multi-faceted campaign
around the budget issue. Having failed to win Al-Otaibi's
support, they are focusing their direct lobbying efforts on
the Minister of Municipalities and believe he is sympathetic
to their cause. They have also made a concerted effort to
engage the media, both to put pressure on the government and
to explain their position to their constituents. At a
well-attended town hall meeting hosted by QMC members at the
Tarut Charitable Society, members explained the implications
of the budget issue and several promised to resign if Qatif
did not receive a budget independent from the Emirate
(Al-Otaibi reports to the Emir of the EP as well as to the
Minister of Municipalities). Regional daily Al-Youm and
Shi'a Internet site Rasid News Network both covered the
meeting. Al-Mustafa said that QMC members had also made
their case on a program on the municipal councils that aired
on Saudi Channel One the week of June 24.


8. (SBU) The QMC has engaged the Qatif public on a number of
other occasions, both as a team and as individuals. A recent
QMC visit to the town of Safwa (in the Qatif oasis) received
prominent coverage on Rasid, for example. The visit offered
a forum for citizens to raise issues with council members and
for council members to put pressure on the town
administration to provide improved services to residents. We
know that individual elected members have been active in
soliciting input from the constituents of their districts,
and at least one is trying to set up a network of elected
advisory committees.

--------------
Comment
--------------

RIYADH 00005173 003 OF 003




9. (C) Comment: Both councils are progressing as one might
expect given their institutional frameworks and the
backgrounds and personalities of their members. In thinking
about the potential for municipal councils to act as
representative local government institutions, there are
encouraging signs. Elected QMC members are organized,
proactive, and cognizant of the importance of involving their
constituents in the governance process. The GDMC members are
starting to learn about municipal administration and
developing an administrative framework for their work, albeit
more slowly. Both councils are forcing a clearly reluctant
Mayor Al-Otaibi to deal with them as legitimate and
representative institutions. Yet what the councils will be
able to accomplish without changes to their institutional
framework remains an open question. As Abdul Jawad noted in
reference to the municipal council by-laws, the councils "do
not have too many authorities." Municipal jurisdiction is
itself limited, municipalities are dependent on Riyadh for
their budgets, and the councils' role is primarily advisory.
We suspect that both councils will raise these issues over
time with the Ministry of Municipalities, which apparently
has a formal feedback mechanism. According to Abdul Jawad,
Prince Mansour bin Miteb, the Deputy Minister of
Municipalities, had asked for reports from the councils after
two years with recommendations for improving their
effectiveness. "We are ready to submit a report after one
year," Abdul Jawad continued; "time is passing." End comment.

(APPROVED: KINCANNON)
OBERWETTER