Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa

Royalty

1969-10-21

Quotes by Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa

• By being friends with all, we are not alone.

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• If somebody gives me his hand, I will not look at him with suspicion.

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• We have evidence that a number of Bahrainis who oppose our government are being trained in Syria. I have seen the files and we have notified the Syrian authorities, but they deny any involvement.

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• We invite American companies looking to raise capital to list on the Bahrain Stock Exchange. The region has a liquidity oversupply approximating $1 trillion and this pool of capital can be tapped into by creative American companies. The next Facebook may very well get funded on the BSE.

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• You cannot transpose the U.S. system on Turkey, and the Turkish system on France etc. You have to understand the people and their culture. That's leadership.

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• We are a constitutional monarchy. I don't order laws, I propose them. Article 35 of our constitution states that the king can only refuse a law of parliament once, then he has to sign it - if the same law is then supported by a two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament.

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• In establishing democracy, we have to be sensitive to the regional and national context. Democracy also means to guarantee the rights of the minorities. That's my job as a king. We have for example a Jewish ambassador in the US and a Christian in the UK.

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• Societies cannot move forward without law, and our constitution is the cornerstone of the law and our National Assembly is its umbrella and fortress.

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• There is no doubt that some in Iran have an unhealthy focus on Bahrain, as some of the broadcast coverage shows.

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• In a sense there is no 'opposition' in Bahrain, as the phrase implies one unified block with the same views. Such a phrase is not in our constitution, unlike say the United Kingdom. We only have people with different views and that's ok.

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• Bahrain lies at the epicenter of Gulf security and any violent upheaval in Bahrain would have enormous geopolitical consequences. Global economic stability depends on the uninterrupted export of crude oil from the Gulf to markets around the world - a job that historically has been assigned to the U.S. Fifth Fleet.

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• Bahrainis are better off than many other Arabs. We have a welfare state, everybody gets a salary whether they have a job or not. Electricity and food are subsidized; school and healthcare are free. And we don't differentiate between Bahrainis and foreigners. We are very proud of that.

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