Page 428 - UAE Truncal States

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The Formation of the Federation

concerned primarily with the issue of how centralised the Federation
should be, and how much sovereignty should be retained by
individual Emirates’ governments.
Although the outcome of this constitutional crisis did not resemble
the image which the joint FNC-Cabinel memorandum had portrayed
of a workable federation for the early 1980s, the ideas of the
memorandum and of subsequent FNC statements170 continue to be
an ever present influence on inter-emirate negotiations and com­
promises, not least because the President himself, who has always
advocated speedy unification, is in agreement with the FNC over
most issues.
The Spring 1979 crisis was an attempt to edge the constitution
towards that of a centralised stale, because so far the federal system
had not attained the necessary balance between input by the member
stales and output by the central government. A federation requires
that the member states give up some of their sovereignty in exchange
for greater security, economic equality, and better public services,
while they may retain other aspects of sovereignty and remain an
identifiable social entity.
The FNC periodically reminded the Supreme Council and the
general public that the federal institutions were still inadequate to
cope with the country’s current needs. Moreover, the precedent was
set in Spring 1979 for outspoken criticism and demonstrations, and
when a public grievance arose over the price of petroleum products
in the northern Emirates in February 1980, students again took to the
streets, this time to demonstrate against the oil companies and to
ask for federal government subsidies.171 A large number of students
from the University in al 'Ain met with the President in a televised
discussion, in itself a demonstration of traditional grass-roots de­
mocracy in action; the students reiterated the FNC’s demands
addressed to the Supreme Council to take up again the discussion of
the .1979 memorandum. In the movement of Spring 1979 and in
subsequent repetitions of the demands voiced in the memorandum,
the issue of democracy formed part of the call for improvement of the
structure and function of the federal state, but it has never been a
main preoccupation.
In a meeting of the Supreme Council on 29 October 1981, the
Provisional Constitution was extended for a further five years without
much overt opposition by the FNC. Shaikh Zayid and Shaikh Rashid
were re-elected as President and Vicepresident of the UAE.
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