In March, al-Jazeera aired a really interesting program on the "priorities of the Arab street." Al-Arabiya now weighs in with its version, called "Arab Priorities 2005", using an on-line poll to frame a set of discussions about the priorities and opinions of its Arab audience. The hook is that they selected three lucky respondents to "represent the Arab citizen" at the May World Economic Forum.
Al-Arabiya's survey (which ran for 24 days; they don't say how many responses they got) suggests the top priority of the Arab public is "reform". Whatever the question asked, according to this write up, participants said that "reform" was the only way to proceed. Unfortunately the questions were kind of an odd grab-bag, and most specific political issues were excluded, but some interesting findings still emerge.
More than 80% of participants said that the delayed development of the Arab world is the fault of the reluctance of their governments about changes and reforms. Since the other options on this question included "the Arab Israeli conflict" and "terrorism", this result seems significant. As for the reasons why people don't participate in political life in the Arab world, 61% said that lack of confidence in political parties was the main reason they abstained, while some 94% mentioned "fear" as a reason not to participate. I found it somewhat disheartening that only 23% saw freedom of expression as the fastest way to develop, although I wonder if the framing of the question mattered there. In a different part of the survey, 59% saw "the absence of democracy and freedom of opinion" was the most important challenge confronting political development.
Only 27% thought that the Arab media offered a positive portrayal of Arab women, compared to 58% who saw a negative portrayal. I wonder what they had in mind here - Nancy and Haifa and company?
An interesting insight into the views of the Arab public, at least that sub-set of the Arab public that watches al-Arabiya and participates in its on-line surveys, with all the usual disclaimers applying.
Fascinating. So does this mean that most people don't care about the AIC as much as Westerners tend to think?
Posted by: Penta | May 15, 2005 at 01:08 PM