Thailand: Ruling Party Has Lost Credibility After Reneging On Lèse-Majesté Cases – Analysis

Thailand's Paetongtarn Shinawatra. Photo Credit: MGR Online VDO, Wikipedia Commons

 November 6, 2024  

By RFA

By Nontarat Phaicharoen

Thailand’s ruling Pheu Thai Party has lost its trust with citizens by breaking with an electoral promise of including royal defamation cases in a proposed amnesty bill for political prisoners, analysts said. 

In late October, the party reversed course by announcing it would now exclude so-called lèse-majesté cases in its version of the bill.

During the 2023 campaign, Pheu Thai, then a party in the opposition, had pledged that it would appeal to the courts to show leniency in the cases of people imprisoned for or charged under the draconian royal insult law, saying its use had been politicized.

Pheu Thai’s decision to exclude such cases in the proposed amnesty legislation shows the party’s true character, political analyst Olarn Thinbangtiao told BenarNews.

“Pheu Thai has now gone bankrupt in terms of credibility,” said Olarn, a political science associate professor at Burapha University.

“They have repeatedly broken their promises, exposing that their democratic ideals and justice are merely fictional narratives.” 

For instance, Pheu Thai reneged on its promise to join forces with the now-disbanded Move Forward Party to form the government.

The lèse-majesté law, framed under Article 112 of the country’s criminal code, carries a maximum jail term of 15 years for each conviction.

At least 27 people are currently imprisoned under the lèse-majesté law, according to the group, Thai Lawyers for Human Rights. And 274 people face 307 royal defamation cases from 2020 until September this year.

Pheu Thai probably took a lesson from the Move Forward Party, which was disbanded in August for 10 years for promising to abolish the royal defamation law, said Sunai Phasuk, a Thai advisor to Human Rights Watch.

Pheu Thai itself faces the specter of disbandment, with the election commission announcing on Oct. 21 that the party was being investigated for an alleged political violation.

“Pheu Thai has chosen to break its promises, possibly calculating that this reduces political risk, especially after seeing the Move Forward Party dissolved for proposing Article 112 reforms,” Sunai told BenarNews.

View from the street

Among Thai citizens, there appears to be an age divide on how Pheu Thai’s turnaround on the amnesty bill is being viewed. 

Peerawat Veeraviriyapitak, a student in Bangkok, said that the party had gone back on its promise. 

“Right now, it seems like Pheu Thai is going back on what they previously said,” Peerawat told BenarNews.

“If some people didn’t actually commit a crime, they should be granted amnesty too.”

But retiree Teerasak Kambannarak agreed with Pheu Thai’s decision.

“Article 112 should not be included in the amnesty bill, as the monarchy is an institution we should protect and uphold,” Teerasak told BenarNews.

While campaigning before last year’s general election, Pheu Thai said that Article 112 cases ought to be included in an Amnesty Act.

Then-party leader and now-Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra had said that royal defamation cases were problematic because anyone could file charges – a fact that has allowed the law to be used as a political weapon.

Paetongtarn’s father, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, also faces Article 112 charges. He was charged in May for comments about the monarchy he made during a 2015 interview in South Korea. 

Parliament is considering four amnesty bill drafts, which include pardoning actions seen as provoking periods of political unrest in the Southeast Asian nation since 2006.

All four target politically motivated offenses. 

These include violations of articles 114, 116, 117 and 118. They are related to sedition, actions aimed at changing laws, incitement to strike for political change and activities against national symbols.

Two of the four drafts – one by the main opposition party People’s Party (formerly known as Move Forward) and a public initiative – called for the draft law to include Article 112 cases.

Parliament is set to review the amnesty bills next month.

Historical precedent

Article 112 has fundamentally become political, said Kitpatchara Somanawat, an assistant professor at Chiang Mai University’s Faculty of Law.

“Over the past 5-10 years, questions have arisen about the monarchy’s political involvement,” Kitpatchara told BenarNews.

“Academic works have suggested connections, leading some to view political expression about the monarchy as an active citizen’s duty. Therefore, Article 112 violations are inherently political crimes, not ordinary ones.”

Thailand has a historical precedent for such an amnesty measure. 

In 1978, the government granted amnesty to those arrested after the October 1976 protests in which 40 people were killed and 3,000 others thrown behind bars.

Ironically, several of those former students given amnesty now hold positions in Paetongtarn’s government.

They include Phumtham Wechayachai, deputy prime minister; Prommin Lertsuridej, the prime minister’s secretary-general and Pheu Thai MPs Adisorn Piengkes and Chaturon Chaisang.

Thailand’s political divisions will never end if the government decides to exclude Article 112 cases under the proposed amnesty law, political analyst Olarn of Burapha University warned.

“Pheu Thai’s decision may affect future democratic discourse and reform efforts in Thailand,” he said. 

“These political issues will remain dormant until the next development because we’re just hiding problems under the carpet.” 

Ruj Chuenban in Bangkok and Wanna Tamthong in Chiang Mai contributed to this story.

Radio Free Asia’s mission is to provide accurate and timely news and information to Asian countries whose governments prohibit access to a free press. Content used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036.

‘You are not my king,’ Indigenous Australian senator yells at visiting King Charles

Australian Senator Lidia Thorpe, center, disrupts proceedings as Britain’s King Charles III and Queen Camilla attend a Parliamentary reception hosted by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and partner Jodie Jaydon at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. 

By Associated Press - Monday, October 21, 2024

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — An Indigenous senator told King Charles III that Australia is not his land as the British royal visited Australia’s parliament on Monday.

Sen. Lidia Thorpe was escorted out of a parliamentary reception for the royal couple after shouting that British colonizers have taken Indigenous land and bones.

“You committed genocide against our people,” she shouted. “Give us what you stole from us - our bones, our skulls, our babies, our people. You destroyed our land. Give us a treaty. We want a treaty.”

No treaty was ever struck between British colonizers and Australia’s Indigenous peoples.

Charles spoke quietly with Albanese while security officials stopped Thorpe from approaching.


“This is not your land. You are not my king,” Thorpe yelled as she was ushered from the hall.

Thorpe is renowned for high-profile protest action. When she was affirmed as a senator in 2022, she wasn’t allowed to describe the then-monarch as “the colonizing Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.” She briefly blocked a police float in Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Madri Gras last year by lying on the street in front of it. Last year, she was also banned for life from a Melbourne strip club after video emerged of her abusing male patrons.


Albanese, who wants the country to become a republic with an Australian head of state, made an oblique reference to the issue in his speech welcoming the monarch.

“You have shown great respect for Australians, even during times when we have debated the future of our own constitutional arrangements and the nature of our relationship with the Crown,” Albanese said. But, he said, “nothing stands still.”

Opposition leader Peter Dutton, who wants to keep the British king as Australia’s monarch, said that many supporters of a republic were honored to attend a reception for the Charles and Queen Camilla at Parliament House in the capital Canberra.

“People have had haircuts, people have shined shoes, suits have been pressed and that’s just the republicans,” Dutton quipped.


But Australia’s six state government signaled their support for an Australian head of state by declining invitations to the reception. They each said they had more pressing engagements on Monday, but monarchists agreed the royals had been snubbed.

Charles used the start of his speech to thank Canberra Indigenous elder Auntie Violet Sheridan for her traditional welcome to the king and queen.

“Let me also say how deeply I appreciated this morning’s moving Welcome to Country ceremony, which offers me the opportunity to pay my respects to the traditional owners of the lands on which we meet, the Ngunnawal people, and all First Nations peoples who have loved and cared for this continent for 65,000 years,” Charles said.

“Throughout my life, Australia’s First Nations peoples have done me the great honor of sharing so generously their stories and cultures. I can only say how much my own experience has been shaped and strengthened by such traditional wisdom,” Charles added.


Australians decided in a referendum in 1999 to retain Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. That result is widely regarded to have been the consequence of disagreement about how a president would be chosen rather than majority support for a monarch.

Albanese has ruled out holding another referendum on the subject during his current three-year term in government. But it is a possibility if his center-left Labor Party is re-elected at elections due by May next year.

Charles was drawn into Australia’s republic debate months before his visit.


The Australian Republic Movement, which wants Australia to sever its constitutional ties with Britain, wrote to Charles in December last year requesting a meeting in Australia and for the king to advocate their cause. Buckingham Palace politely wrote back in March to say the king’s meetings would be decided upon by the Australian government. A meeting with the ARM does not appear on the official itinerary.

“Whether Australia becomes a republic is … a matter for the Australian public to decide,” the Buckingham Palace letter said.

Earlier Monday, Charles and Camilla laid wreaths at the Australian War Memorial then shook hands with well-wishers on the second full day of their visit.

The memorial estimated 4,000 people had turned out to see the couple.

Charles, 75, is being treated for cancer, which has led to a scaled-down itinerary. It is Charles’ 17th trip to Australia and the first since he became king in 2022. It is the first visit to Australia by a reigning British monarch since his late mother Queen Elizabeth II traveled to the distant nation in 2011.

Charles and Camilla rested the day after their arrival late Friday before making their first public appearance of the trip at a church service in Sydney on Sunday. They then flew to Canberra where they visited the Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier and a reception at Parliament House.

Before leaving the war memorial, they stopped to greet hundreds of people who gathered under clear skies flying Australian flags. The temperature was forecast to reach a mild high of 24 degrees Celsius (75 degrees Fahrenheit).

On Wednesday, Charles will travel to Samoa, where he will open the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.

Why an Australian senator heckled King Charles

Katy Watson
BBC News
Reporting from Canberra
Oct 21, 2024

'You are not my King': Moment King Charles is heckled by Australian politician

Lidia Thorpe is no stranger to controversy and it’s not the first time she’s voiced her views on the British monarchy.

The Gunnai, Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung woman has been a senator for Victoria since 2020, the first Aboriginal senator from that state.

Prior to that, she had a history of Indigenous activism - she also worked as the chairperson of Naidoc (National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee) for the state of Victoria, an organisation that works to recognise and teach Australians about First Nations cultures and their histories.

In 2022, while being sworn in to parliament after a re-election, she called the late Queen a coloniser.

“I sovereign, Lidia Thorpe, do solemnly and sincerely swear that I will be faithful and I bear true allegiance to the colonising her majesty Queen Elizabeth II,” she said, as she was being sworn in.

After criticism from other senators, she then repeated the oath as printed.

So Monday’s incident wouldn’t have come as much surprise to anyone who follows Australian politics. Lidia Thorpe has made her views clear - that British settlement saw huge numbers of Indigenous people massacred and the scars of colonisation are still very apparent for many First Nations people in Australia.

Whether or not you agree with Lidia Thorpe’s approach, the fact is that there are deep disparities between First Nations people and non-Indigenous Australians when it comes to many indicators including education, health and life expectancy.

Last year Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said a young Indigenous man was more likely to go to jail than university, which is borne out by statistics, as ABC showed.

And between 2020 and 2022, the life expectancy of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders was estimated to be eight years shorter than non-Indigenous Australians.

“I wanted to send a clear message to the King of England that he’s not the King of this country, he’s not my king, he’s not sovereign,” Thorpe told the BBC after being removed from the Great Hall after heckling. “To be sovereign you have to be of this land. He’s not of this land.”

She went on.

“How can he stand up there and say he’s the King of our country - he’s stolen so much wealth from our people and from our land and he needs to give that back. And he needs to entertain a conversation for a peace treaty in this country,” she said.

“We can lead that, we can do that - we can be a better country but we cannot bow to the coloniser whose ancestors he spoke about in there are responsible for mass murder, for mass genocide.”

Reuters
Lidia Thorpe was escorted out by security after she heckled King Charles

One of Lidia Thorpe’s biggest grievances is the fact that Australia is the only Commonwealth nation that has never signed a treaty with its Indigenous people. She’s been pushing for that as a priority.

For her, last year’s referendum on a Voice to Parliament - a body made up of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders providing advice to parliament on Indigenous issues - was a distraction from what was important - a treaty.

Australians resoundingly voted against the proposal and she was one of a minority of First Nations people who also voted no.

She told the BBC at the time that the Voice was about "assimilating us into the colonial constitution to make us nice, neat little Indigenous Australians that will continue to be oppressed by the coloniser".

Indigenous Australian senator defends heckling King

Aboriginal Australians: 'Could the Queen have done more?'

But she was in the minority among First Nations people to do so. Regions with a high proportion of Indigenous Australians overwhelmingly voted yes but Aboriginal people make up close to 4% of Australia’s population. Nationally, just over 60% of voters across Australia voted against.

Not all Indigenous leaders appear as troubled by royal visits as Lidia Thorpe.

Allira Davis, co-chair of the Uluru Youth Dialogue, said she respected the late Queen, even describing her as “beautiful”.

What about the current visit by King Charles?

“I don't think it's that important. We're our own country,” Allira Davis told the BBC, speaking before Lidia Thorpe heckled him in Canberra.

“Understanding the history of what has happened in this country is really, really key. We're not just a white country anymore. We're a very brown country. We're a very multicultural country.

“So I'm all for becoming a republic, but we need to deal with recognising our First Nations people.”

So although Lidia Thorpe reflects a view shared by many about the damage that colonisation did - and still does - not everyone agrees with her approach.

Local media have reported that former co-workers have found her difficult to work with.

But Lidia Thorpe - who is now an independent after leaving the Greens over the party’s support for the Yes vote in the referendum - is unlikely to change tack. She thinks the King needs to play a bigger role in making good the ills of the past.

Who is Lidia Thorpe? Australian senator shares cartoon of King Charles beheading

Aboriginal Australian senator Lidia Thorpe staged a protest against King Charles after his speech at Parliament House in Canberra.

Ross McGuinness
Mon 21 October 2024 

The Australian senator who shouted "You are not my king" at King Charles has shared a cartoon image of the monarch in which he is beheaded.

Charles was heckled on Monday by Lidia Thorpe, an Aboriginal independent senator who is a fierce campaigner for Indigenous people's rights and has a history of criticising the monarchy.

Hours after her verbal attack on the King, Thorpe posted a cartoon on her Instagram stories that shows him after being beheaded.

The image had been shared on Instagram by its creator, artist Matt Chun, who posted it alongside a quote from Thorpe's message to the King earlier in the day. The cartoon shows the King's head outside his crown, under Thorpe's statement, "You are not our king."

At the end of a speech delivered by Charles at Australia's Parliament House in the capital Canberra, Thorpe launched a verbal attack on him, claiming "genocide" had been committed against "our people", and demanded a treaty between Australia's First Nations and its government.

The independent senator from Victoria shouted: “You committed genocide against our people. Give us our land back. Give us what you stole from us – our bones, our skulls, our babies, our people.

Australian senator Lidia Thorpe, centre, stages a protest against King Charles at Parliament House, Canberra, Australia. (Reuters)

“Give us a treaty – we want a treaty with this country. This is not your land, you are not my king, you are not our king.”

Charles had just left the lectern after his speech to rejoin Queen Camilla when Thorpe started shouting - her verbal attack lasted for about one minute before she was led from the room by security.

Afterwards, Thorpe told the BBC: “I wanted to send a clear message to the King of England that he is not the King of this country.

“He is not my king. He is not sovereign. We are sovereign. To be sovereign, you have to be of the land. He is not of this land.

Australian senator Lidia Thorpe is led away by security after protesting against King Charles at Parliament House in Canberra. (Reuters)

King Charles during a reception at Parliament House, Canberra, Australia, which was interrupted by a protesting senator. (Reuters)

“We have been demanding a treaty for decades and decades. There is a sophisticated genocide going on against my people. We have… almost 24,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children that have been taken from their families.”

Following the incident, Thorpe posted on X, formerly Twitter: "Not my King. Treaty now."

In his speech, Charles had spoken of the debt he owed to Australia’s Indigenous people.



He said: “Throughout my life, Australia’s First Nations peoples have done me the great honour of sharing, so generously, their stories and cultures. I can only say how much my own experience has been shaped and strengthened by such traditional wisdom.”
Who is Lidia Thorpe?

The 51-year-old politician has a long history of activism, protest and defending the rights of Australia's Indigenous people, as well as publicly criticising the monarchy.

She has been the senator for Victoria since 2020 and is the first Aboriginal senator from that state.

Thorpe had been a member of the Greens and was the party's deputy leader in the Senate but quit her position after revelations she had a relationship with Dean Martin, the former head of the Rebels outlaw motorcycle gang, while she was serving on the parliament's law enforcement committee.

Aboriginal Australian senator Lidia Thorpe is known for her political activism. (Getty Images)

She left the party entirely to sit as an independent senator in 2023 over its backing for the Indigenous voice to parliament referendum, which she opposed, instead calling for a treaty process with the Aboriginal people.

Thorpe, an Aboriginal woman of Djab Wurrung, Gunnai and Gunditjmara descent, was born in 1973 and grew up in Housing Commission flats in Collingwood, Melbourne, and became a single mother at the age of 17 - she has three children.

She was declared bankrupt in 2013 and said that it had resulted from domestic violence, and was discharged from bankruptcy in 2016.

In 2017, Thorpe won a by-election as a Greens party candidate to take her seat in the Victorian state parliament, the first Indigenous woman to do so.

Senator Lidia Thorpe during her swearing-in on 6 October 2020. (Getty Images)

Although she lost that seat a year later, she was preselected in 2020 to become a Greens senator in the federal parliament. She wore a traditional Aboriginal possum-skin cloak when being sworn in and raised her fist in a "Black power" salute.

In 2022, after being re-elected, Thorpe criticised the monarchy by referring to the then Queen as "the colonising Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II" during her swearing-in ceremony. She was forced to take the oath again, removing her reference to "colonising".

Australian senator Lidia Thorpe during an 'abolish the monarchy' protest outside the British Consulate in Melbourne on 22 September 2022, a national day of mourning in Australia following Queen Elizabeth II's death. (Getty Images)

Lidia Thorpe with fake blood on her hands during a protest calling for the monarchy to be abolished. (Getty Images)

During an Australian national day of mourning following Elizabeth II's death in September of that year, Thorpe protested in an "abolish the monarchy" demonstration in Melbourne, in which she covered her hands in fake blood.

Thorpe said: "This is what today is about, the Crown has blood on their hands. Our people are still dying in this country every single day."

Senator Lidia Thorpe, left, and a man dressed as King Charles during a protest in Melbourne in May 2023 opposing his coronation. (Getty Images)

In May 2023, Thorpe dressed in Elizabethan costume and sat down with a man wearing a King Charles mask as part of a protest against his coronation.

In February 2023, Thorpe was roved from the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade after she lay down in front of a float to protest against the presence of police.

The following month, she protested against an anti-transgender rights rally, which included British activist Kellie-Jay Keen, outside Parliament House.

Keir Starmer praises Charles after king was heckled in Australia

Aletha Adu

Political correspondent
Mon 21 October 2024 

King Charles is doing a “fantastic job”, particularly in the context of his “health challenges”, the prime minister has said after the royal was heckled by the Indigenous Australian senator Lidia Thorpe.

Charles had just finished addressing MPs and senators at Parliament House in Canberra, as part of his five-day tour of Australia with Camilla, when he was approached by Thorpe, who yelled: “This is not your country.”

After the launch of the public consultation on the future of the NHS on Monday, Keir Starmer was asked whether it was “disgraceful” that Australian politicians were “heckling the king”.

Starmer said: “Look, I think the king is doing a fantastic job, an incredible ambassador not just for our country, but across the Commonwealth.

“I think he’s doing a fantastic job, and we should remember in the context of health, that he is out there doing his public service notwithstanding, you know, the health challenges he himself has had – so I think he’s doing a great job.”

Charles has paused his cancer treatment, after his diagnosis in February, while he carries out his first tour as monarch to Australia, and his state visit to Samoa.

Starmer also praised the monarch as an “incredible ambassador” for the Commonwealth, and said he was looking forward to joining Charles in Samoa for the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (Chogm) summit.

Thorpe had shouted at Charles: “You committed genocide against our people. Give us our land back. Give us what you stole from us – our bones, our skulls, our babies, our people.

“You destroyed our land. Give us a treaty. We want a treaty in this country. You are a ‘genocidalist’.”

As Thorpe was ushered out from the hall, she added: “Give us a treaty – we want a treaty with this country … This is not your land, this is not your land, you are not my king, you are not our king.”

Thorpe later said in a statement: “The British crown committed heinous crimes against the First Peoples of this country.

“These crimes include war crimes, crimes against humanity and failure to prevent genocide. There has been no justice for these crimes. The crown must be held accountable.”

When asked if Britain was guilty of genocide in Australia, the prime minister’s official spokesperson said he would not be drawn on comments made in relation to royal matters. But he said Britain’s relationship with Australia was “fantastic” and that it was a key ally.

But No 10 said Starmer remained opposed to apologising for the UK’s historical role in slavery, with the spokesperson noting talks around reparations are “not on the agenda” for the Chogm meeting.

“The position on apology remains the same,” they said. “We won’t be offering an apology at Chogm, but we will continue to engage with partners on the issues as we work with them to tackle the pressing challenges of today and indeed for the future generations.”

ABOLISH MONARCHY

Qatar's ruler says his nation will vote on abandoning legislative elections after just one poll

JON GAMBRELL
Tue, October 15, 2024 

 Qatar's ruling emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani addresses the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Qatar's ruling emir said Tuesday his small, energy-rich nation will hold a referendum on ending a short-lived experiment in electing members of the country's advisory Shura Council.

Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani offered no immediate timeline for the referendum in an annual address to the Shura Council, which drafts laws, approves state budgets, debates major issues and provides advice to the ruler. The body does not have sway over matters of defense, security and the economy.

However, it marks yet another rollback in the hereditarily ruled Gulf Arab states in its halting steps to embrace representational rule, however tentative, following efforts by the United States to push harder for democratic reforms in the Middle East after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and hopes for democracy in the region rose in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring.

From its perspective, Qatar saw the one-time 2021 vote likely as increasing tensions between tribes and families in the country just months after a diplomatic crisis between Doha and four Arab nations ended.

“We are all one family in Qatar,” Sheikh Tamim said, according to a transcript published by the state-run Qatar News Agency. “The contest between candidates for membership in the Shura Council took place within families and tribes, and there are different views regarding the repercussions of such competition on our norms, traditions, as well as the conventional social institutions and their cohesion.”

The emir added: “The contest assumes an identity-based character that we are not equipped to handle, with potential complications over time that we would rather avoid.”

The country’s electoral law distinguishes between born and naturalized Qatari citizens and bars the latter from electoral participation. Human Rights Watch described the system as “discriminatory,” excluding thousands of Qataris from running or voting. The disqualifications have sparked minor tribal protests that led to several arrests.

Qatar first introduced plans for the legislative elections in its 2003 constitution, but authorities repeatedly postponed the vote. The country finally held the vote to elect two-thirds of the Shura Council in October 2021, just after the end of a boycott of Qatar by Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that tore the Gulf Arab states apart.

The vote also came about a year ahead of Qatar hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup, an event that drew intense scrutiny from the West to both Doha's treatment of foreign laborers and its system of governance. Qatar remains an important nation to the West as it hosted the Taliban and assisted in the chaotic 2021 NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan and as a mediator as the Israel-Hamas war rages in the Gaza Strip and has expanded to Lebanon.

Qatar, like other Gulf Arab states, is ruled by a hereditary leader with ultimate say in how the country is governed. Before the oil industry roared into the Gulf and upended hundreds of years of governance, rulers led by consensus among their people.

The U.S. after the Cold War began a push for democracy in the Mideast, while carefully balancing its relationships with longtime client states it cultivated in its competition with the Soviet Union and its support of Israel. That push strengthened under then-President George W. Bush following the 9/11 attacks, which saw Gulf Arab states make tentative moves toward some type of representation.

The U.S. State Department did not respond to a request for comment over the announcement by Qatar, home to the massive Al-Udeid Air Base hosting the forward headquarters of the U.S. military's Central Command.

Governance by consensus is something Gulf rulers attempt to maintain even today even as some sit atop vast sums of oil and gas wealth that have transformed their countries.

Sheikh Tamim alluded to that in his speech Tuesday, maintaining that “the Shura Council is not a representative parliament in a democratic system.”

“In Qatar, the people and the government have a direct civic relationship, and there are recognized norms and mechanisms for direct communication between the people and the governance,” he said.

But it's not just Qatar rolling back on its experiment in representational government. In May, the ruler of oil-rich Kuwait dissolved his country's parliament for as much as four years. While the Kuwaiti parliament had struggled, it represented the Gulf Arab state's most free-wheeling legislative body and could challenge the country's rulers.

Over a decade on from the 2011 Arab Spring protests, “we’ve seen this kind of retreat coming for some time,” said Kristin Smith Diwan, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.

“It's important to recognize there has been a debate on this and there was a popular push from below for more representation and accountability,” Diwan said. “But it seems like that moment has passed.”