Shura elections..

No doubt you are all aware of the momentum that has been gathering in regards to this issue here in Oman and how 'important' it is to the people of the country. Unfortunately, though, there are always two sides to the story.

The first side of the story tells us how exactly our beloved Oman is such a great country and how far we have come in terms of democratic elections and procedures that allow the entire Omani population to take part in this process and help along the way in making our country a much better place in exact parallel to the government's efforts to surface the country to being a 'developed' nation one day. This is in form of establishing a Shura Council that allows several members of the society that are elected by the people of Oman to represent their hometowns/cities/wilayats in order to bring up to the government officials - in a face to face Q&A session - their concerns, complaints, suggestions and claims. And of course there is also the Oman Council where all the government officials meet up with His Majesty the Sultan of Oman to bring him up to date with the requests of his loyal Omani subjects and what developments are being made towards those issues (although most of those sessions are done behind closed doors).

Then there is the other side of the story that has so many questions and queries to ask and begs to differ with the situation at hand. The fact that our country has come a long way in the last 36 (not counting the upcoming Omani national day) years and what development has been done so far in the progress of this country in many aspects in terms of democracy; freedom of speech and the term of applying worldwide adaptable standards upon the country so that it runs in a more efficient and productive manner.

The reason why this is being posted is because the names of the Shura election candidates have been finally announced in the local newspapers, thus bringing me to one question; if the Shura elections have been made to help people represent individuals of the society to bring in the claims needed for the Omani population then what about changing the ways of the country - who is it that we talk to and 'suggest' to, in order to bring our expectations up to par?