Can there be happiness – or tolerance – in a country without justice and rule of law?

Can there be happiness – or tolerance – in a country without justice and rule of law?

On a recent visit to the UAE, David Rothkopf, Foreign Policy editor, was so impressed by what he saw that he wrote a piece in which he lauds the UAE's "welcome experiments in a search for producing a successful state in a region that, at least in recent memory, has had a very unfortunate track record in areas of governance".

I can only marvel at the tragic irony that Rothkopf would present as a regional role model a country that punishes non-violent dissidents with jail terms and the stripping of citizenship. A country whose online image is dominated by the likes of Dhahi Khalfan and Waseem Yusuf (more on them in a bit). A country whose foreign policy has greatly contributed to regional misery, but is touted as 'progressive' because it has a ministry of happiness, a ministry of tolerance, and a minister of youth who's actually young.

How sustainable can any experiment in governance be in the absence of justice and basic rule of law?

People cannot be truly happy if they live without freedom, no matter how flashy their golden shackles are.

There are definitely some commendable things being done in the UAE. The digitization of government services has increased efficiency and productivity and stamped out corruption, helping further transform society. I am sure, too, that the UAE's new ministers of happiness and tolerance are good people and I do not wish them any ill.

But their efforts will amount to little unless they can – at the very least – stand up to the country's security establishment, which operates unfettered by any semblance of transparency or due process or rule of law.

Otherwise, the first act of the minster of tolerance should be to launch an investigation into Dhahi Khalfan, the country's notoriously intolerant ex-police chief who has at one point accused Obama of being secretly Shia, and called for expelling all Iranians from the UAE.

Or perhaps Waseem Yusuf, a naturalized UAE citizen and local TV personality who leads an online army of pro-government trolls and who has lengthy anti-Shia tirades on both YouTube and Twitter.

And perhaps the new "minister of happiness" should pay a visit to the three adult children of political prisoner Mohammad Abdulrazzaq al-Siddiq, who earlier this month were extrajudicially and without explanation stripped of citizenship, presumably for protesting the incarceration of their father. Or pay a visit to Al Sadr Prison in Abu Dhabi, where police officers cheer as Asian workers are slapped, spit on, and humiliated.

You don't need to declare a ministry of happiness or tolerance to achieve happiness and tolerance. All you need is a truly independent ministry of justice. Without rule of law and the freedom to criticize those who impede justice, there can be no tolerance or happiness in the UAE or any other country.

Tags: Tolerance

 

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