More than 300 voices will define FNC poll campaign

The young people of the UAE are leading the charge into the imminent elections for the Federal National Council (FNC) and they have a vast challenge in trying to organise their debates in a manner that all voters will be able to hear and question the candidates' positions.

The lack of electoral tradition in the UAE will be cruelly exposed as candidates will be forced to disagree with each other in debates that will not be designed to achieve a consensus, but instead are supposed to emphasise differences.

This week more than 300 candidates from all seven emirates registered as candidates to contest the 20 elected seats in the next session of the FNC. The electoral rules limit campaigning to a specific period — it starts on September 4 and ends a few days before the September 24 elections — so at this stage it is hard to gauge to what the main issues are that have driven the candidates to put themselves forward for public office.

Some candidates have spoken in general terms of the importance of bringing more young people into the politics of the UAE, and others have spoken of seeking better services in areas like education and infrastructure.

Nothing so far as been very controversial and there is a danger that the lack of practice in public debate will dull the campaigning season. It would be a pity if the issues faded out of the debate, and the voters concentrated on the personality and family backgrounds of the candidates.

The UAE has a vigorous tradition of debating in the majlis but it is hard to translate this into the much more public arena of an election campaign. There is no public tradition of seeking public support through open debate, and of using all the various forms of the media to put out the message that the candidates will want to push. There is also little tradition of public disagreement, which is inevitable in electoral politics.

Of course, there have been vigorous debates for many years as officials and people have debated how the UAE should develop, if the education system will meet the needs of the country, if the infrastructure can cope with the planned expansion of the cities.

The powerful emotions around the debate on how to reinforce the UAE's national identity among its citizens, is another important example of how debate and public discussion has taken place on issues which are fundamental to the country.

But this process has not been as structured as will be required by an election. It has happened in the more intimate environments of people's houses, or their majlis, as well as in the country's media. There will have to be a huge leap as the new candidates prepare their thoughts on the whole range of issues that the FNC will have to deal with, and for debates incorporating a whole range of candidates, including conservatives, liberals, religious and others from more single issue backgrounds of civil society campaigning.

Social media will have a huge impact in this election. The whole history of the Arab Spring has been followed by most Arabs on Twitter and Facebook, and the established media have lost out to their new cousins. So the vast majority of the UAE's voters will be finding their information on their mobile phones, and making their electoral judgments on what they are told by their friends on-line.

This is all the more likely since the UAE does not have any political parties, nor any associations or civil movements which allow a candidate to label themselves on to something that the voters can understand quickly.

For example, if a US congressman described himself as a liberal Republican, Americans understand where he is coming from without too much difficulty. If the same congressman were to describe himself as John Doe, the voters would need to hear a lot of his personal statements to make their judgements.

So during September, the UAE will face a cacophony of individual candidates seeking to make themselves heard in an environment which is not used to listening. It will be very challenging, and the outcome is hard to predict as such a debate cannot be well-structured. But the inner cohesion of UAE society is likely to come to the fore, and not allow the divisions over policy or structure to become a major issue.

The elected members of the FNC will only be half the total membership of the chamber, and the remaining 20 members will be appointed by the government after the election results are published. It will be interesting to see if the appointed members feel any different from the elected members, or even if either group feel that this is a significant distinction.

The next session of the FNC is due to be tasked with reviewing its responsibilities, and seeking to expand them from its present roles of reviewing (but not initiating) legislation in an advisory (but not compulsory) capacity; and of calling ministers to be grilled by the membership.

So the September campaigning season will be important for the future of the UAE. It will be a genuine first experience, and it may have faults, but it is a very fundamental development in the way the country looks at itself.