Thanks!

Agreed.

The Israel thing is awful, and don’t expect any redistributive policies coming. Neoliberalism has no place for that. If anything expect an even more yawning gap. However, apparently the EDB’s plan is to link educational reform to the labour market (apparently they’ll come as part of the same package). I’m just not sure about what will be recommended in the education reforms. We’ll have to wait and see.

Also, yes, teh neoliberalism we are witnessing is also the worst type you can get. It’s based on land grab and “finance and banking”. Nothing much that is value producing is made whatsoever. No industry, no manufacturing etc. It’s mainly financial and land speculation. I have a post on that lined up.

And welcome back to you too!

- as a person, it’s attractive to see this handsome future ‘king’ through the eyes of hope and desire and to give him benefit of the doubt. I can’t help feeling he lacks political gravitas and charisma, I can’t see anything particularly pioneering in what he does relative to the pace of change in the world. But again, his job must be difficult in having to manouvre round a domineering uncle, a complacent father and regional geopolitics. Who is to really know the extent to which father-son political-economic roles have been diminished by the uncle if that inter-dynamic is indeed true. Does it matter? The outcome of all their policies has been to enshrine an protect their kinship, rule and wealth.

- the CPs desire to normalise relations with Isreal, “the day is not far when you could visit us and we could visit you” is pretty worrying.

- the misguided belief that the EDB can consider effectively labour market policy in isolation from the wider economic or political context, or employment in isolation of redistributive wealth policy, or training the labour force in isolation of educational policy and so on. Focusing on one without looking at the other is like ignoring the elephant in the room.

- As a beneficiary, the CP’s neo-liberal ideals are not just an ideological indulgance but a underpin a firm agenda to promote and encourage massive land development projects in the most vulgur and exploitative form of capitalism I have yet to witness. In the absence of democratic regulation and accountability this takes the country down an uncertain economic path full of further corruption, bottlenecks, further inflation, unsustainable economic growth. In the absence of any strategic 10 or 30 year plan, it appears to be ad-hoc and ‘we’ll fix it as we go along’ type of strategy and people do not feel stakeholders or take ownership of the development process. People are supposed sit around and wait for the crumbs to fall off the dining table or wait for the ‘rising tide to life our boats’ while rising inflation erodes their income.

oh yeah and welcome back!

ammaro- i agree with you on the first point but not the last point. I can’t see how pure neoliberalism is good for this place, especially as it has a pretty bad track record elsewhere and isn’t exactly geared well towards oil rich countries.

He talks about growth and development, when what is really needed is empowerment and human rights. And he fails to realize that economic reform is of no use unless it is tied to political reform. His labour reform plan mentions little about the most important issue — labour rights.

Anyhows, more disturbing is this eagerness among certain people to view him as a saviour for all of Bahrain’s problems. Neither Salman bin Hamad, or any other individual will solve anything until people start demanding — and seizing — power for themselves.

the whole obsession with white people ideas is stupid. they have no frickin idea how our society runs, and therefore you get a lot of things screwed up along the way. theyre not even necessarily the best, just white.

i dont mind the zany ideas, its always good to try new things. and the opinionation part just means hes a pretty damn strong leader. im sure he listens, just not very openly.

as for the neoliberalism concept, i think it can work perfectly in a small country such as bahrain, if applied in the right way. sure, we will have some losers in the short run, but over the next 20 or 30 years, bahrain can flourish overall. i think he’s weighing out the advantages vs disadvantages. sure, he has a lot to gain from it as well, but i think us, the people, have much to gain too.

I. Agreed! I’ll have more to say on it in the next post.

I guess it’s obvious that i disagree with you redbelt! Where is it exactly common to offshore your economy off to consultants? Certainly not anywhere in the developed world, or anywhere with semblance of a democracy and checks and balances. Can you imagine France offshoring off it’s whole education or employment policy to be done by Mckinsey? You think that will go down well in their parliament and public? The only place in the world where this “trend” is happening is in the Middle East.

As for zany ideas, sure history is filled with bold interesting ideas that worked out, but it is also filled with many zany ideas that backfired badly. Look how well Mary Antoinette’s suggestion that they eat cake worked out. I ‘m not sure which type these fall in.

As for rules and systems, I think the complaint that he’s (allegedly) decided to annex a massive area in the sea nearly the size of muharraq shows how doubtful that is.

This is why I’m actually very worried of how Bahrain might be left over when we go through with these ideas.

I agree with you completly. While the Price has some virtues (he is definately better than his counterparts), his neo-liberal economic policy is problematic. His economic reforms only serve to increase the divide between the rich and the poor which will ultimately have a negative impact on the stability of Bahrain. In addition, the focus of development in Bahrain right now is on real estate. Real estate brings quick profits but does nothing to actually improve the Bahraini economy. There is also a focus on services. The economies of first world countries are moving toward becoming service economies. However, it in important to have the backbone of industry to do that. We don’t have that in Bahrain. Instead, our economy is divided between oil (a diminishing natural resource) and the service sector. Both are unstable.