Bahrain Propaganda 101: A Tale of Tom Squitieri, Ali Abbas Shamtoot MP, and the Latest PR in The Huffington Post

Last week, amongst our coverage of the US and British public-relations "army" employed by the Bahraini regime to praise its achievements and denounce protesters, we noted Tom Squitieri, a journalist fired in 2005 by USA Today for plagiarism. Squitieri now runs the public-relations consultancy TS Navigations LLC "to immediately end the negative while building toward a pro-active platform". That was good enough to get a Bahraini contract and place an article in The Huffington Post demonising demonstrators as puppets of foreign powers and malevolent leaders of the opposition.

Squitieri, unaware or uncaring that some people are noticing his paid shilling for Bahrain's monarchy, followed up with a piece last Wednesday on Bahrain's recent Parliamentary by-elections. Perhaps needless to say, Squitieri tried to dismiss the low turnout of 17.4% in the first round of the 14 by-elections and the failure to announce any level of participation in the second round. 

Instead, invoking the spirit of protest in the US through Tom Hayden, a prominent leader of demonstrations in 1968 who eventually became a California legislator, Squitieri presented us with this success story of protester-turned-Parliamentarian:

Say hello to Ali Abbas Shamtoot, 34, former security guard at the Ministry of Education and owner of a mini-bus service who today finds himself a newly elected member of the Bahrain parliament, representing Constituency Four, Capital Governorate.

Shamtoot's photo was plastered throughout the media as a leader in the demonstrations that rocked Bahrain in February and March. The government's crackdown to those demonstrations triggered the leading opposition group in parliament to resign its 18 seats. That prompted the just held by-elections to fill those seats, and seven months and 10 days after he was a leading face in the street protests Shamtoot was elected to parliament.

There is irony in his election. Political groups who oppose the government and demonstrated told people to boycott the election. They underscored that by doing their best to block access to polls and scare voters. It worked -- voter turnout was much lower that historical levels.

But the election went on and now there are 18 new members of parliament in seats once held by the main opposition, including a record number of women. Many have already begun their work, striking independent positions, calling on the government to enact reform and disdaining the mean streets approach to problem solving and democracy.

Well, even if we presume that Squitieri was handed the Shamtoot line by his Bahraini employers, that would seem a mighty fine lesson to anyone with a problem with the regime: keep it off the streets and make yourself a candidate for office.

We did a bit of research and checked with sources in Bahrain, however, and the story is not quite as simple.

Last year Shamtoot had announced his candidacy for a Parliamentary seat as an "independent" against the favourite, a member of the leading opposition party Al Wefaq. At the last minute, however, he pulled out of the race.

Shamtoot did participate in the protests that began in February. However, the resignation of the 18 MPs from the Al Wefaq presented him with an opportunity to claim the place in Parliament that he desired. So he declared his candidacy for a seat traditionally won by the opposition and, because of the success of the boycott, needed only 148 votes --- "less than the number of names in my address book", said one activist --- to claim victory.

An EA source is a bit sceptical about Squitieri's rioter-to-respectable-MP narrative:

Ali used to show up in many of the opposition rallies and protests. Before he decided to run for MP, he consulted Al Wefaq and they advised him to boycott but he decided otherwise.

Ali had found an easy way to make money if he ran for MP. One of his friends once told me that Ali told him before the elections, "If I saw 4000 BD ($10,500), I might die!"

His story might make a good sitcom actually --- everyone laughs when his name is mentioned these days.

Everyone doubts he will stay for long and a lot are saying that he might withdraw, after receiving the benefits of being an MP.

Of course, this won't deter Squitieri's prose: "Shamtoot's election is just one more example of the surprises that came from the by-election. He and other wild cards have the potential to greatly energize the parliament. It could be a classic lemons to lemonade story."

But we do note this from Bahrain's State news agency on Sunday:

Seventeen newly-elected MPs have today been sworn in during the inaugural session chaired by Parliament Speaker Khalifa Al-Dhahrani.

The eighteenth elected MP. Ali Abbas Shamtoot, missed the oath-taking ceremony due to sickness.