By PRINCE KHALED AL-FAISAL, ARABNEWS

Recent research study on Arab opinion clearly debunks the false and fabricated allegations against Saudi Arabia

IN early March, the Doha-based Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS) published a report entitled “Measurement of Arab Public Opinion Project.” ACRPS is an independent research institute and think tank for the study of history and social sciences, with particular emphasis on applied social sciences. It also carries out studies about the region’s history, and geo-strategic issues, in addition to giving prominence to studies related to policies, together with their criticism and presentation of alternatives, whether they are Arab policies or international policies pertaining to the Arab world. These policies are either concerned with governments or those of organizations and political parties.

The report consists of major findings of the Arab Opinion Index for 2011, prepared by ACRPS. The center compiled the index through carrying out face-to-face interviews with 16,173 respondents. It was carried out via multistaged cluster samples of societies belonging to 12 Arab countries. They are Mauritania, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia and Yemen. The survey represented 85 percent of the population of the Arab world.

The Arab Index is an ACRPS project carrying out surveys with the objective of drawing Arab public opinion vis-à-vis the political, economic and social topics that are of concern for the Arab nation. It also focused on how far the Arab citizens are satisfied with their living conditions and the level of services offered to them in addition to their approach toward democracy and participation in politics, as well as the impact of religion in their public and political life. The index also contained questions to measure their trust in government institutions, as well as their perspectives about sources of threat to their personal safety and security of their nation in addition to other Arabs in the region.

What prompted me to mention about this report and findings of the index was my observations about the attitude of Saudi media — whether they are official or private, electronic or print or social networking sites — which did not give any prominence to this report. Moreover, I would like to draw attention to the findings and impartial testimonies that reject false claims made by enemies against Saudi Arabia, and that the Kingdom cannot be made accountable on the basis of such baseless allegations.

Let me quote major excerpts from the report.

How far respondents are satisfied with their living conditions“

Replies of respondents who represent various Arab societies differ from each other with regard to their satisfaction with the living standards. Among the people who enjoy a higher level of satisfaction include those from Saudi Arabia, Mauritania and Sudan. Their degree of satisfaction is above 85 percent (more than half of the respondents are ‘satisfied well.’) The percentage of Iraqis who responded ‘satisfied well’ was only two. As for Palestinians, about 35 percent of them responded that they were not satisfied with their living conditions. Similar was the case with Yemenis (30 percent), and Morocco and Lebanon (29 percent).

With regard to the views of respondents about economic conditions of their families, there are clear variations from one country to another. Most of the respondents from a number of countries were content with the economic conditions of their families. These included Saudi Arabia (75 percent), Jordan (64 percent), Algeria (62 percent) and Sudan (60 percent). A majority of respondents from some other countries said that they were not content with the economic conditions of their families. These included Mauritania (51 percent), Palestine (58 percent), Yemen (64 percent) and Iraq (69 percent)

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