It was to be the year of consecration for Mohammed Ben Salman. The presidency of the G20, the group of the twenty richest countries on the planet, having been awarded in 2020 to Saudi Arabia, the ambitious crown prince, son of King Salman, had the opportunity to shine.
The summit of heads of state planned for November was to allow it to regain its place on the international scene, after two years of hidden ostracism, due to the Khashoggi affair – named after the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, murdered in the consulate of his country in Istanbul, October 2, 2018. And the series of conferences scheduled upstream, draining ministers and high foreign officials, was to ensure the promotion of the "new Arabia" dear to the dolphin. A country on the move, determined to break with its archaisms, to open up to women and to get out of "all oil".
The modernizing ambitions of the crown prince, base of his meteoric political ascent, are weakened
The global health crisis triggered by the Covid-19 epidemic has called this ambitious agenda into question. Ministerial meetings have switched to virtual mode, each slammed in their capital, their noses on a computer screen. Uncertainty hangs over the feasibility of the summit to be held on November 21 and 22. In the kingdom where there are 44,830 infection and 273 dead, the epidemic has still not reached its peak.
The disappointment is all the greater for "MBS", the nickname of Mohammed Ben Salman, as the oil crisis, exacerbated by the coronavirus, weakens its modernizing ambitions, the basis of its meteoric political rise. Among the economic measures presented Monday, May 11 by the Minister of Finance, Mohammed Al-Jadaan, in response to the collapse in black gold prices, include the freezing or postponement of certain major development projects.
The finance minister has not gone into details, but it is a safe bet that Neom, the ultra-modern city of "MBS", will pay the price for this plan. Budgeted at 500 billion dollars, head of gondola of Vision 2030, the crown prince's reform program, this futuristic megalopolis is supposed to be created in the next five years, in the northwest corner of the Arabian peninsula. It is also likely that planned investments in the tourism sector, emblematic of the Saudi number two's desire to open up, will be slowed down.
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