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Bahrain: “Fragile” Constitutional Amendments, boosting up the Crisis, and not resonating locally and internationally - d. The extent to which the “elected” is empowered over the “appointed” in terms of legislation

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Bahrain “Fragile” Constitutional Amendments, boosting up the Crisis, and not res	[Bahrain “Fragile” Constitutional Amendments, boosting up the Crisis, and not resonating locally and internationally - ENGLISH]	716 Kb
البحرين: تعديلات دستورية "هشة".. تكرس الأزمة..ولا تلقى صدى محليا ودوليا	[البحرين: تعديلات دستورية "هشة".. تكرس الأزمة..ولا تلقى صدى محليا ودوليا ]	430 Kb

D. The extent to which the “elected” is empowered over the “appointed” in terms of  legislation

The constitutional amendments grants the President of the Representatives Council the presidency of the National Council (the joint of the two -Shura and Representatives Councils), generally (Article 102). It also noted that in the case of the two chambers disagreement on passing a bill twice (Article 85), the original texts of the mentioned articles gives the presidency of both Councils to the appointed Shura Council.

In fact, this amendment does not address the problem of legislation, which is supposed to be anabsolute elected legislative authority. However, that half of the parliament (the appointed Shura chamber) is sat by the king and that does really abort the will of the people represented in an elected council, when those appointed, as happened in the last ten years, stand along with the ruling authority in the legislation process. Additionally, there is no significance of having Representatives Council as a legislative power, no more.

Furthermore, the constitutional amendment in (Article 52), added that the appointment of the members of the Shura Council will be based on "a royal order, in accordance with the regulations and conditions prescribed by the Royal Order”. And that does not change anything in the constitutional amendment as these controls are set by the king himself, and he has the authority to change them, so that a "Royal Order is issued by the will of the King alone and is not preceded by any decision of any authority in regard, while the Royal Decree is issued by the King after being preceded by a decision of the regulatory authority (two branches, Shura Council and the Council of Ministers)"⁽¹⁰⁾.

Among the amendments that are considered also important by the authority is the change that occurred on (Article 83), where the President of the Representative Council (not the Shura as was the case before the amendment) is the in charge person who would refer the bills to the government!

There is no need to be watered down as that is fully configurable, so long as the elected Council is unable to legislate, not because of 40 assigned members vying against themin the legislating only (obstacle #1), but for another essential reason. This reason is in (Article 92) of the Constitution that requires a referral of the law "Proposals" to the government (another obstacle again), who re-formulates them in the form of law "projects", and then returnthem to the Representatives Council. Most importantly, this procedure must take only "six months" (obstacle #3), and this period of time has been lately added to therecent constitutional amendments on May 3, 2012. After that the government was dragging its feet in re-drafting of laws and proposals and returning them to the Representatives Council.

In case of the Representatives Council passed a bill, it must wait for the approval of the Shura Council, and then wait for confirmation by the King (fourth obstacle)! This turns the Representatives council to a fragile institution of legislation within a number of fundamental and huge obstacles and hurdles.