Last week’s meeting between His Majesty Sultan Haitham bin Tarik and the executive bureaus of the State Council and the Majlis Ash'shura was more than a formal audience. It was a moment of institutional signalling — one that spoke to expectations about how Oman’s consultative bodies should evolve in a changing political, social and economic landscape.
His Majesty’s remarks rightly emphasised the need for both chambers to strengthen their engagement with society, enhance cooperation with the executive branch, and improve public communication around government plans, priorities, and objectives.
In a context shaped by ambitious national strategies and increasingly complex policy choices, such guidance is understandable. Yet this guidance will only succeed if enhanced cooperation and public communication are matched by a sustained strengthening of independent oversight and representative responsiveness, without which engagement risks becoming performative rather than substantive.
Oman’s bicameral structure — the elected Majlis Ash'shura and the appointed State Council — together forming the Council of Oman, was designed to balance experience with popular representation, deliberation with accountability. Within this architecture, the councils are entrusted with three interrelated roles: consultation, representation and oversight. These roles are complementary, not interchangeable and none should be diluted in favour of the others.
Globally, legislative bodies are experiencing what many analysts describe as a recession in law-making power, as executive authority expands in response to economic volatility, geopolitical uncertainty, and technological change. In such conditions, the vitality of parliaments is increasingly measured not by the volume of legislation they initiate, but by the quality of their scrutiny and the authenticity of their connection to the public. This is reflected in international benchmarks articulated by bodies such as the Inter-Parliamentary Union, which defines parliaments fit for the twenty-first century as those that are representative, transparent, accessible and effective in holding governments to account.
Against this backdrop, the Shura’s growing use of oversight tools — parliamentary questions, committee inquiries, ministerial briefings, and field visits—represents a positive institutional trajectory. Oversight, when exercised professionally and evidence-based, does not weaken governance; it strengthens it by improving policy quality, identifying implementation gaps, and reinforcing public trust.
At the same time, representation must be understood as more than electoral legitimacy alone. Genuine representation requires sustained engagement with citizens’ lived realities—economic pressures, regional disparities, youth aspirations, and social transformation. Councillors must not only listen but translate societal concerns into structured institutional action, ensuring that public voices shape policy deliberation rather than merely react to it.
Here, a subtle but consequential risk must be stated plainly. In an era of rapid information flows and sophisticated strategic communication, representative institutions can gradually slide into the role of explainers of executive policy rather than interrogators of its assumptions, design, and outcomes. When councils become conduits for government narratives primarily — however well-intentioned — they risk narrowing their constitutional purpose. Oversight, by its nature, requires structured scepticism: the capacity to ask difficult questions, to demand clarity, to assess trade-offs, and to surface unintended consequences. Communication with the public should therefore be the product of scrutiny, not its substitute.
This distinction matters. A council that explains policies without first rigorously examining them may succeed in informing the public, but it fails in representing them. Conversely, a council that interrogates policy thoroughly before communicating it enhances both legitimacy and trust, demonstrating that national plans have been tested, debated, and refined through institutional processes rather than merely transmitted.
None of this implies adversarialism or institutional friction for its own sake. On the contrary, constructive oversight is a form of partnership — one that respects executive authority while recognising that accountability is essential to long-term policy success. Cooperation between branches of government is most effective when it is grounded in clarity of roles, not their convergence.
HM’s call for deeper engagement and clearer communication should therefore be read as an invitation to institutional maturity rather than functional realignment. For Oman’s councils, the challenge is not simply to modernise their tools or expand their outreach, but to preserve the delicate equilibrium between consultation, representation and oversight that underpins credible governance.
If the councils succeed in this task—strengthening their interrogative capacity while remaining connected to the public they serve — they will not only fulfil His Majesty’s vision but also reinforce the foundations of participatory governance suited to the demands of the twenty-first century.
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