Federal Council must tackle tough issues

The UAE Federal National Council (FNC) resumes its session today. Almost two years ago, the country witnessed a historical stage when the nation elected half of the members of the FNC for the first time since 1971.

This step was the first stage in a process that aims to create a fully-elected FNC within a few years according to the ambitious strategy set up by President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

The 40 FNC seats are distributed to the member Emirates in the following manner: eight seats for each of the emirates of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, six seats for the emirates of Sharjah and Ras Al Khaimah, and four seats for the emirates of Ajman, Umm Al Quwain and Fujairah.

According to the Constitution, the FNC's power in exercising its legislative function is restricted to the following: discussing the constitutional amendments and draft laws, which may be approved, amended or dismissed by the council; the FNC may also express any remarks on any international treaties and conventions it is notified of; and discuss and express its remarks on the UAE budget and final account.

The FNC also performs a supervisory function which means all forms and tools of political supervision specified by the constitutions for the parliamentary houses as well as the methods followed by such houses to monitor the policy and performance of the executive authority.

Such a function represents the extent of the houses' interest in all the general affairs in the UAE, be they political, economic, social and all the national issues.

However, it is essential to point out that the FNC does not suggest laws; it only discusses them after they have been suggested and transferred from the Cabinet to the council.

Since February 2007, the FNC has organised 16 sessions where several national issues have been discussed.

Some of these issues include federal human resources law, policies of general and higher education, federal telecommunications regulations, the establishment and maintenance of new federal roads between some emirates, policies of national housing represented by Shaikh Zayed Housing Programme, general policy of the Ministry of Health, tourism regulations, and general policy of environment.

Strategic impact

Meanwhile, the Cabinet has the right to reject the FNC's request to discuss a particular issue and an example of this situation happened when the Cabinet refused discussing the Free Zones conditions just before the summer holiday.

However, the council should consider some issues with strategic impacts that need to be discussed during its sessions.

For a long time, these issues have been broadly discussed at various levels nationwide, but many UAE citizens believe it is the responsibility of the FNC to suggest major regulations to confront the anticipated consequences of certain issues.

The first issue is the increase in inflation rates. According to major international economic reports, the UAE had an inflation rate of 11 per cent in 2007. It is expected to rise to a record 12 per cent this year unless immediate steps are taken to revalue the dirham to tighten monetary policy.

The second critical issue is the national identity of the UAE. The challenges that face our national identity as reflected by many nationals include: the significant decrease in usage of the Arabic language and the growing usage of English as a first language.

It is important for the FNC to discuss the policies and programmes of the relevant ministries and organisations in order to recognise, supervise and evaluate their efforts to accomplish the goals of making 2008 - the year of the national identity.

Another issue facing the FNC is the transparent evaluation of the performance of its elected members.

I believe that the 20 elected members of the FNC need to perform a self- evaluation process in order to determine whether they have accomplished what they promised the voters to deliver.

Abdullah Al Shaiba is a UAE national academic and thinker.