The "Without Borders" program (20/20/2020) hosted a professor at the London College of Economics and Political Science, Madawi Al-Rasheed, to discuss the austerity policy pursued by Saudi Arabia, and the freedom of the Saudi street to express its opinion on it.
Madawi Al-Rasheed said that if the entire Saudi people agreed with the austerity policy pursued by Saudi Arabia, the prisons would not be crowded with activists, journalists and writers.
And considered that it is not possible to talk about the public opinion of the Saudi street in a country where there is no freedom of the press, and where the journalist is killed even after leaving the country, as happened with the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
She added that the Saudi political elite are employees of the state, as they follow the path of Saudi politics at home and abroad, change their axes and fluctuate with the volatility of state policies.
She explained that the Saudi system relied more than 80% on a single commodity, and therefore the economy is subject to successive cycles, sometimes prices rise and the state is able to have a high purchasing power, so part of it is spent on the citizen, as happened in the oil boom.
But she pointed out that this total dependence makes the boom cycle followed by a cycle of impoverishment, in which the citizen feels economic hardship, as is the current situation, which began since 2014 when oil prices fell.