Crown Prince: We don't have blue blood; royal family’s mission is to serve people

Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman affirmed that royal family’s mission is to serve the people of Saudi Arabia.

In his interview with “The Atlantic” magazine, the Crown Prince said: “In Saudi Arabia, we don't have blue blood. Our way as a royal family, it's to serve the people. We are part of the people. For example, my mother is not from a royal family. She’s from a tribal family Ojman. There are almost one million people from Ojman and Yam tribes in the Kingdom.”

“And if you look at the royal family, we have marriages with non-royals, and we are part of them. And we live and are raised here, and we are part of the Arabian Peninsula.”

 

The Crown Prince stated that Saudi Arabia is a monarchy, based and founded on that model. And I told you that beneath the monarchy there is a complex structure of tribal and urban monarchical system like tribal chiefs and urban leaders. I cannot change Saudi Arabia from a monarchy to another type of system, because it has been based on a monarchy for 300 years, and this complex monarchical structure, of 1000 tribal and urban systems have been part of how people lived in the past and it is part of a Saudi Arabia today and its continuation as a monarchy. Among the Saudi royal family, you have more than 5000 royals from the House of Al-Saud. The members of the Allegiance Council among them chose me to protect the interest of the monarchy that runs this complex structure based on thousands of tribal and semi-tribal leaders.

According to the Crown Prince, changing this system is like betraying the Al-Saud, betraying these thousands of tribal leaders and semi-tribal leaders in Saudi Arabia.. But all of those leaders help make the changes in Saudi Arabia. So I don't think that they are the people who are slowing change. They are the ones who help me to do more.

He reiterated that Saudi Arabia is not an absolute monarchy, in the sense that the King cannot wake up tomorrow and do whatever he wants. There is a rightful way of running this country. The Kingdom’s constitution states clearly that there are three branches of power. The executive, which is led by the King as the prime minister. But the two others are not led by him, but are appointed by him. There are institutions and processes and procedures. Here’s an example about how you make a decision. We wanted to allow women to drive in 2015. But we couldn't do it until 2017. So that shows you that we worked by the Book, by the Constitution, he said.

“If we run the country randomly, like a tent, that means the whole economy is going to collapse. This means that no one is going to invest in Saudi Arabia, and that even Saudis are not going to believe in us. We can’t just run it randomly. That’s the Qadhafi way,” he added.