Saudi monarch issues rules on succession law
Middle East Desk Report

RIYADH—Saudi Arabia’s ageing King Abdullah has issued a set of rules to implement a succession law announced last year in a bid to ensure a smooth transition of power in the world’s biggest oil producer.
Under a decree issued on Monday, the king detailed regulations governing a committee created to choose future kings and crown princes in the desert kingdom which has been ruled by the Al-Saud dynasty for 75 years.
The decree, published by the official SPA news agency and other media in Saudi Arabia, designates that the committee’s members must be the sons or grandsons of the kingdom’s founder Abdul Aziz bin Saud, who died in 1953.
The succession law, which does not apply to King Abdullah, who is in his mid-80s, or to his half-brother Crown Prince Sultan, “aims at streamlining the succession process,” said the English-language Arab News.
The transfer of power in Saudi Arabia, founded in 1932, is keenly watched by oil markets as the vast nation sits on one quarter of the world’s known oil reserves.
Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy with no elected parliament or political parties and the population of about 23 million is ruled by strict Sharia Islamic law.
The succession law, which was announced last October, establishes a new mechanism for declaring the reigning monarch or heir to the throne unfit to continue in their duties, either temporarily or permanently.
On the death of the monarch, the committee would immediately hold a meeting to name the crown prince as king and then the new ruler would have 10 days to inform the commission of his choice of crown prince.
All Saudi kings to date have been sons of the kingdom’s founder Abdul Aziz, although he is estimated to have fathered anywhere between 50 and several hundred.
When King Fahd died in August 2005, then crown prince Abdullah was swiftly approved as the new monarch having already served as the kingdom’s de facto ruler for some years because of Fahd’s declining health.
Some successions have not been so easy. In 1964, the founder’s eldest son King Saud was deposed by his brother Faisal, who was then assassinated in 1975. In the decree, King Abdullah said membership of the so-called Allegiance Commission was limited to four years but could be renewed with the agreement of the king and the member’s brothers.
Membership will be limited to Abdul Aziz’s sons or a grandson of those who have died or are incapacitated, as well as one son each designated by the king and by the crown prince. However, the size of the committee is not known.
The committee, which will be chaired by the oldest surviving descendant of Abdul Aziz, will take its decisions by majority vote in a secret ballot but must have a quorum of two-thirds.
It will choose a crown prince from up to three candidates put forward by the king but will have the authority to reject all of them and put forward its own nominee.
In the event of rejection by the king, the committee will then have a month to hold a vote to choose between the king’s candidate and its own.
Previously the crown prince had always been selected by informal consensus within the royal family, a process that generally led to the senior prince taking the throne at increasingly advanced ages.