As you know he is being touted as a reformer by the media here. He is definitely the best out of the royal family - the one with the cleanest hands. If he were King I doubt he would have authorized this crackdown. Also students with the crown prince scholarships still have their scholarships, unlike the students with the government scholarships. He is also one of the few royals to recognize that Bahrain has a poverty problem. However, he is no democrat definitely part of the problem. He clearly doesn't like his uncle. But instead of weakening his uncle by supporting democratic change, he pushed to weaken the power of the ministries (all under the prime minister) and strengthen the economic development board which he controls. This is structurally problematic because if we do end up having an elected prime minister, a lot of the prime minister's power will be curbed by the economic development board. Second, I have always been a strong critic of his development program. A couple of years ago, he hired the US consulting group McKenzie to restructure Bahrains economy. Now I know who gets hired by McKenzie - they usually hire ppl straight out of undergrad. In fact, many of McKenzie's consultants went to the same school as I. One of them involved in the Bahrain project was actually in my class. I am telling you, these people know nothing about restructing an economy. Imagine a bunch of recent grads restructing the economy of an entire country?!! Of course the policies they recommended were of the neo-liberal type - no minimum wage for example. So basically under the crown prince Bahrains economy has grown tremendously but the majority of the Bahraini people have not benefited. Bahrain has become a purely capitalistic society and the difference between the rich and the poor keeps growing. Every time I come back to Bahrain I see massive wealth but also massive poverty. As the saying goes, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. His policies have succeeded in slowly transforming Bahrain into a classist society. Classism didn't exist before - people divided themselve by family and by which village/part of town they are from. Social groups were composed of rich and poor alike. But now this new wealthy upper class has emerged as a result of them benefiting from these new neo-liberal policies. These ppl are really happy with the new Bahrain - they enjoy the F1, the new malls, the chain restaurants, the massive real estate projects (all by the way which use reclaimed land thus destroying our marine environment), the new five star hotels. Somehow they see this as progress. However all it suceeded in creating is a massive divide in Bahraini society, more poverty and more resentment. I believe that these neo-liberal policies are one of the main reasons behind the protests today. When the protests happened I got excited. Not only because I wanted democratic change but also every time I would go back home I would get a sick feeling in my stomach - I could no longer sit comfortably on the beach in the Ritz Carlton knowing that the majority of the people in Bahrain cannot even access places like this (we only have three public beaches by the way). What we needed the past 10 years was a sustainable development project - not one like this.
Congrats by the way - I am being told that AlAkhbar is considered THE source of news in Bahrain."
PS I don't necessarily agree with this view of Crown Prince and regard his role as part of choreographed division of powers and role within the royal family.
