“The Saudi rulers are rapidly changing the country.” Newspaper: This is the first thing the authorities want you to see

In recent years, Saudi Arabia has seen rapid social change and women’s participation in public works in the Kingdom, which raises questions about the real reasons behind this.

With Saudi authorities planning the country’s future after oil and integrating women into public office, the kingdom seems “intent on making a real change, or at least convincing the world,” according to a newspaper article.Washington Post “.

The “Live Golf” tournament, held in Jeddah and funded by the government, is a small part of the “Saudi plan”, according to the newspaper.

The Sports Federation of Saudi Universities requires students to volunteer and more than 300 students have been selected as volunteers in the golf tournament and most of them were women, according to the Washington Post.

“The rulers here are changing this country very rapidly,” said Bouchaib Al-Jadiani, head of community involvement and national teams for the Saudi Golf Federation.

Questions about “reasons for the change”

For years, Saudi Arabia has closed its doors to visitors from all over the world, and authorities granted the kingdom’s first tourist visas in 2018, the same year that the national ban on women from driving and working outside the home was lifted. .

These steps came as part of a policy of the country’s de facto leader, crown prince and prime minister, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, which allowed Saudi women to play sports and participate in sporting events for the first time.

At Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz International Airport, women work almost entirely in passport control, which prompted the Washington Post to question the reasons for this focus on women.

“Is it the result of diversified employment? Or because airports are often the first impression of a place,” says the newspaper, adding, “Is this the first thing the authorities want to see?”

But women have yet to obtain the consent of a male guardian to marry, and last August a Saudi woman was sentenced to 34 years in prison for tweets critical of the government.

In December 2018, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

“Four years after the crime at the hands of (a Saudi death squad), has Saudi Arabia softened its position? Or is it just another act of apparent hospitality aimed at gaining consensus?” Says the Washington Post.

“They (the Saudi authorities) want to do this because they need to wash their faces,” says Zainab Abu al-Khair, whose brother has been sentenced to death in a Saudi prison since 2014 for allegedly drug trafficking.

And he sees that the Saudi authorities are trying to show the world an image that Saudi Arabia has changed, saying, “They are changing, yes, but that’s still not enough,” according to the “Washington Post”.

Mohammed bin Salman is racing against time to modernize the kingdom by 2030, hoping to expand the Saudi economy and decouple it from oil exports.