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NEWSDESK
Waking Up Too
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- Written by Content Manager
- Category: In Other News
This article appeared on The Economist on June 23,2012
IT HAS been described as the world’s most charming police state. Oman’s ruler, Sultan Qaboos, who overthrew his father in 1970, now stands out as easily the longest-serving ruler in the Middle East, and perhaps as the world’s only absolute monarch not to have a publicly designated successor. A few reforms have got under way since strikes and protests hit the country last year. But with most power still in the sultan’s hands, questions about the future have begun to loom. The calm is now being challenged, albeit still a lot less fiercely than elsewhere in the Arab world.
Some of Oman’s more hopeful political activists say it is better that no ambitious crown prince is waiting in the wings. In a country where it remains utterly taboo to criticise the sultan openly, reformists instead argue that they need to create checks and balances not against him but against his unknown successor.
READ MORE AT The Economist
*Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
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