Page 430 - UAE Truncal States_Neat

Conclusion

optimism and to work for the benefit of their country as a whole.
One landmark was when the long-standing disagreement over
financing the federal government was brought close to being solved,
when on 13 March 1980 the President Shaikh Zayid and the Prime
Minister Shaikh Rashid agreed that both Abu Dhabi and Dubai
would place 50 per cent of their revenues from oil at the disposal of
the federal Slate. In August 1980 agreement was reached on
replacing the Currency Board with a Central Bank, which started to
function in December 1980. Agreements such as these illustrate that
the process of building the State is continuous. In this light the
Provisional Constitution can be seen as an expression of the
intention to achieve a federal State. The blank spaces and the gaps
between the lines are gradually being filled, rendering its text a more
workable reality and a basis for co-existence of diverse political
forces, and at the same time preparing the ground for eventual
agreement on a permanent constitution.
Both the pace and the results of this ongoing process are very
much influenced by the nature of society, its background and history,
and arising out of this, by the diverse conceptions of the form that
society is to take in the future. Traditional and personal relation­
ships still play a role in this process, whether it be the tribesman's
allegiance to his shaikh, a merchant’s memories of the days when he
lent the Ruler money, or the accustomed right of anyone to express
his views on any matter in the Ruler's majlis.
Another factor is the understandable reluctance of the once
sovereign States to risk becoming anonymous administrative units in
a technically well functioning Stale with which the population finds
it difficult to identify.
Adjustment of constitutional theory under the influence of the
historically generated reality is not exclusive to the UAE. but it goes
on in all countries, although it is more intensive in complicated
political organisms such as federations. The case of the UAE differs
from western style federations in a fundamental way: the consti­
tution is neither as a text nor in its interpretation and application the
most binding authority in the state. The ultimate reference is the
nature of a State in which the people live in harmony with the
precepts of Islam.
The Federation would have had less chance to survive the first ten
years if even the present stage of constitutional evolution had been
imposed in 1971. Abrupt centralisation or unification of political life
403