Anwar Gargash, minister of state for foreign affairs and one of the main public voices of the UAE government, dismissed criticism of its wave of arrests of alleged Islamists as a “condescending monologue”.
The rare public riposte – carried in the government-owned newspaper The National – comes as countries across the Gulf grapple with the impact of the Arab revolts and their suspicion of some of the Islamist parties now taking power.
“The UAE’s end goal is not a liberal multiparty system,” wrote Mr Gargash in the opinion piece published on Sunday. “This model does not correspond with our culture or historical development. There is insufficient evidence that a multiparty system works in the Arab world.”
His comments come as the UAE defends its own crackdown in which around 50 men have been arrested, accused of threatening state security. Human rights groups say the detainees are mostly Islamists and have been arrested for their political beliefs rather than for posing a security risk. The group also includes a prominent human rights lawyer.
Echoing other Middle East leaders who have warned that western-style democracy is not the right model for the region, he said a multiparty political system would divide the population into tribes, clans and sectarian groups.
“Recent developments in the Arab world augment this view, and political parties remain polarised, threatening the unity of the state and the cohesiveness of the society,” he wrote.
Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a Dubai-based professor of political science at Emirates University, said he hoped the rare airing of official thinking on the country’s political evolution marked “just the beginning of opening up”, adding: “The government has not been good at articulating its own version of things.”
The oil-rich Gulf state has not witnessed any protests against the leadership and many Emiratis have expressed their support for the tribal system that governs the seven mini-states of the UAE. In 2011 the government moved to broaden the still limited suffrage for its federal national council, an advisory body without legislative power.
“Nobody that I know, nobody in his right mind calls for a multiparty system in the UAE, nobody has gone so far – it’s not a demand,” says Mr Abdulla. “People are going for the basic minimum, to have a federal national council that’s fully elected.”
While stifling any whisper of dissent at home, the UAE, alongside Qatar, gave military support to Nato operations in Libya that targeted Muammer Gaddafi’s army, under a mandate to protect Libyan civilians. Qatar and Saudi Arabia have also backed arming the Syrian rebels.
Kristian Coates-Ulrichsen, a Gulf expert at the London School of Economics, said the comments were “a damage limitation exercise”.
“The authorities are nervous of contagion and unwilling to tolerate any expression of dissent, relying instead on the creation of a sophisticated and pervasive system of surveillance and suppression,” he said.
The country is home to much of the region’s western media, but in recent months it has taken to criticising the press for their reporting of its political situation.
“Any opinion that only highlights our political ‘failings’ and national security concerns, while ignoring the regional context and its dangers, will appear as a condescending monologue. Many recent news reports fall into this category,” Mr Gargash wrote.
