Today's 4...Vetoes, property, participation & spring

Waving goodbye to talks with Russia...

The website ArabianBusiness.com reported that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that dialogue between Saudi Arabia and Russia is "useless" following Russia's vote against the UN resolution calling for an end to violence in Syria. The Saudi king criticised China and Russia for not coordinating with the "Arab stance" towards Asad's regime. Of course, King Abdullah may have been more accurate if he'd added the word "Sunni" to "Arab stance" in this instance...

PropertyShowrooms.com reported that sales of Dubai property are picking up, especially amongst local and domestic investors who believe that the emirate's property market has now hit rock bottom. According to Cluttons, real estate transactions increased by 64% in the final quarter of 2011, thanks in part to the return of accessible financing. What with people moving back and businesses relocating to Dubai to avoid the domestic political troubles in nearby Gulf states, it seems the (near) future's bright for Dubai.

Al-Jazeera reported that this week's uncontested elections in Yemen had an overall (official) voter turnout of 60%. To put this in context, the contested UK general election of 2010 achieved 65% voter participation throughout the UK. Considering that the Yemeni election had a foregone conclusion and voters were threatened with violent attacks on polling stations in the south of the country this figure is amazing. Of course, we should exercise some scepticism in the 60% as it is an official figure, but even if it were 40-50% this is still noteworthy. The Yemenis have certainly taught us in the UK (and other democratic countries globally) that we should turn out to our contested elections in greater droves than we currently do.

And finally...

Gulf Daily News reported on comments made by a senior member of the British Army, Lt. General Lamb. Lamb argues that to categorise activities in Bahrain under the term "Arab Spring" is misleading. He states that countries where there is "systematic, state-sponsored abuse of its own people" such as Syria, Libya and Tunisia, (and not Bahrain), fall better into the Arab Spring category. I would never state that the situation in Bahrain is similar in brutality to that of Syria or the final months of Gaddafi's Libya. However, I do think it is somewhat blinkered to ignore the international context of Bahrain's anti-government protests. To that end we cannot write-off Bahrain as being a part, albeit less brutally than others, of the "Arab Spring".