Already unofficially in charge for several years, the leader succeeds his father, Khalifa Ben Zayed Al-Nahyane, who died on Friday, at the head of one of the most powerful countries in the Middle East.
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The de facto manager has also become the defendant. This is how we can summarize the political developments that occurred at the end of the week in the United Arab Emirates (water). Following the death, Friday, May 13, at 73, from Khalifa Ben Zayed Al-Nahyane, the president of this Federation of the Gulf Principality, a brain accident had forced to withdraw from the political scene in 2014, his Half-brother, Mohamed Ben Zayed al-Nahyane, the strong man of the petromonarchy since that date, reached the presidency on Saturday May 14. “All this changes practically nothing, recognizes the political scientist Émirati Abdulkhaleq Abdullah. It has been almost ten years since Mohamed Ben Zayed was acting as the president and was recognized as such, both inside the country and The stranger. “
Foreign dignitaries immediately started to flock to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the water, which has become in the space of a decade one of the most powerful countries in the Middle East. Among them is Emmanuel Macron, who arrived in the Gulf on Sunday, his first trip abroad since his re -election. During his first mandate, the French president made Emirates the pillar of his action in the Arab-Muslim world, a partnership highlighted by the Mega-Contract of 80 Rafale, signed in December 2021 in Abu Dhabi. Mr. Macron presented his condolences to the new Emirati head of state and congratulated him for his “election”.
In fact of election, it was a formality. The Federal Supreme Council, a body bringing together the monarchs of the seven emirates who make up the water, designated the one that is nicknamed “MBZ” as a unanimous president, ratifying a long -prepared succession scheme. Having become a crown prince of Abu Dhabi in 2004 on the death of his father, Zayed, the founder of the water, and while Khalifa became emir of Abu Dhabi and president, Sheikh Mohamed was programmed to achieve supreme power.
A police state
The constitution of water does not reserve the presidency of the country at the monarch of the Emirat-Capital. Article 51 provides that the Head of State is elected among the members of the Supreme Council, which supposes that in theory, the emir of one of the six other cities can claim the management of the country. But the imbalance of wealth is such between Abu Dhabi, whose soils are full of oil, and the other emirates that a centralization form has been imposed, to the detriment of the federal water vocation.
Dubai, the country’s glamorous showcase, the only emirate capable of shading Abu Dhabi, had to give up his ambitions at the time of the 2008 financial crash. In exchange, Abu Dhabi had saved the city of bankruptcy , bailing out its real estate sector, over -indebted. The famous Burj Khalifa, a steel arrow 828 m high, is the symbol of this tutorship. Pride of Mohamed Ben Rachid Al-Maktoum, the local emir, who wanted to call her “Dubai tour”, she had been renamed by the name of the emir of Abu Dhabi to his inauguration, in 2010.
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