I FREQUENTLY go to my office at the Dubai World Trade Centre on Friday to catch up on work. The building is deserted, the phones are quiet and there’s nobody around to come and chat, with the result that one can get twice as much done in half the time.

Last week, however, my peace was interrupted by the sounds of a commotion in the foyer. I wandered out to find that the festive season had arrived. Large Christmas trees were being erected and decorated with tinsel, baubles, lights and mock presents.

Inevitably, in this part of the world, it was a group of Filipinos who had the decorating job. They have rightly gained a reputation for being the community with the light artistic touch and you will find them employed in all the big hotels, arranging flowers and plants and turning bare ballrooms into magical themes. It is Pakistanis who largely control the flower and garden business but when it comes to delicate arrangements, the Filipinos take over.

They spent the whole day putting up the trees — and quite magnificent they look -– right outside the Dubai Financial Market (the stock exchange) which leads off the foyer. So now we have UAE national investors sitting in the shade of Christmas trees, sipping their Arabic coffee while watching the share prices leaping up and down on the plasma screens. Despite spending many years in Dubai, it is a scene that I just can’t quite get used to. But, then, this is Dubai where the bizarre is often taken for granted.

The cosmopolitan population means that many religious and cultural festivals are celebrated throughout the year and the city effortlessly takes them in its stride. Apart from there genuinely being an accommodating attitude towards other faiths on the part of the authorities, it is all good for business – and at the end of the day, little else matters in Dubai.

Residents are packing the shopping malls and Father Christmas manages to be everywhere at once –- including sitting in his grotto in the snow at the new ski slope which opened a couple of weeks ago at the vast Mall of the Emirates. The hotels are doing special deals for office parties and there’s an entertainment extravaganza lined up for Christmas and the New Year.

It is virtually impossible to get a flight into Dubai from Europe at this time of the year. Not only are friends and relatives coming to stay with residents to get away from the winter and bask on the beaches, but many tour companies have organized shopping trips. At one time the well-heeled Londoner headed for New York to buy his Christmas presents. Now Dubai is a favourite destination.

This has added to the existing pressure on hotels and prices are soaring, with the average rate in a five-star hotel around $350 a night. “It’s becoming a rich man’s destination,” said one tour operator this week. Loads of hotels are in the construction stage but it will be a long time before the pressure on space eases off.

But I discovered this week that Dubai is not the only place in the Gulf with a hotel shortage. I had to make an unexpected trip up to Doha, the capital of Qatar. It meant that I couldn’t join a group of friends who were heading off to Karachi to support England in the one-day match. Despite their team suffering one of their worst ever defeats, they returned to Dubai ecstatic about the trip, enthusing about the great atmosphere at the game and the wonderful welcome they received. Didn’t say much about the cricket though.

It’s an hour’s flight to Doha and instead of travelling from Dubai, I decided to fly from neighbouring Sharjah on the budget carrier, Air Arabia. The timings suited me and there were other distinct advantages. With the traffic chaos we now suffer in Dubai, it is just as quick to get to Sharjah airport as it is to Dubai and because Dubai is such a huge airport, you have to allow much more time to catch your flight. And the final advantage was the price — $126 return by Air Arabia, compared to $425 by the likes of Dubai’s Emirates Airline and Qatar Airways. Air Arabia, which is owned by the government of Sharjah, is expanding fast but doesn’t fly to Pakistan yet.

Doha is a competitor to Dubai in several areas, although you would never hear officialdom in either city say that -– “complementary to each other” is the sort of coy phrase they use when trying to disguise the fact that they would do anything to steal a march over the other.

They are competing with their airlines, for the tourism market, with financial centres, technology parks, their man-made residential and leisure islands and their sporting facilities. Doha is moving fast, but has a long way to go to catch up with Dubai and I wonder whether it ever will.

At the end of next year, Doha will be hosting the Asian Games and the city is in some chaos at present with roads being widened, flyovers and underpasses being built and loads of hotels being constructed. The comparatively recent burst of activity in Doha after years of slumber has meant an increase in the population (it’s around 750,000, about a third of the size of Dubai) and rents are going up and the hotels are full.

The new hotels should be enough to accommodate the visitors for the Asian Games, although already people are asking who will fill them after the games. Doha has pretences to being a centre of tourism but, in reality, there is not, at present, much there to attract visitors. My guess is that tourism will be largely confined to people travelling on Qatar Airways to other destinations who decide on a night’s stopover.

Overall, the city still has a relaxed, quiet, air about it -– and this comes as much relief after the frantic, nerve-wracking, bustle of Dubai. There are said to be international companies that are actively considering moving to Doha to get away from the soaring rents and traffic-clogged highways of Dubai, but I’m not aware of this happening so far.

One thing they won’t get away from will be the sights and sounds of Christmas. Doha might be lagging behind Dubai in many things, but Christmas trees and music are not in short supply there, in the malls, the hotels and at the airport. Yes, business sense crosses all boundaries.

BEIRUT: With the voting done in Iraq, now begins the political jockeying that could shape the country’s future for years. Even after the final results are announced in about 10 days, it could take several weeks — perhaps months — for the winners of Thursday’s parliamentary election to form a new government. And the key question of who will be Iraq’s next prime minister will be resolved in a series of complicated manoeuvres and backroom dealings among the three dominant forces in the new legislature: Shias, Kurds and Sunnis.

The election will give Iraq its first full-fledged parliament since the US invasion that toppled military dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime in March 2003. The 275 legislators, who each will serve a four-year term, must choose a government that will tackle key questions left unresolved by the country’s new constitution. This government also will help determine whether the 160,000 US troops in Iraq can begin withdrawing next year.

In the days leading up to the vote, American officials emphasized the high stakes for the entire Middle East and the United States. “What happens in Iraq will shape the future of the world,” US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters in Baghdad last week. The election pitted a coalition of religious parties from Iraq’s newly resurgent Shia majority against Sunnis and secular Iraqis who want to curb the influence of Islamist groups. Some Iraqis say the outcome will determine whether their country becomes a Shia theocracy like Iran.

“Religion was a key factor in this election, as it was in the January election,” said Zuheir Jazairy, a political analyst in Baghdad. “The new parliament will have the power to shape Iraqis’ lives more than any of the previous governments that served since the US invasion.”

One key power of the incoming legislature will be to amend the Iraqi constitution approved by voters in October. Lawmakers will have a four-month window to make changes. During the constitution’s drafting, negotiations were deadlocked for months over three key issues: the role of Islam in civil laws; the desire of Kurds in the north and Shias in the south to establish semi-independent regions under a weak federal government; and the distribution of Iraq’s oil revenues.

Sunnis posed the biggest barrier to achieving a consensus on the charter. Making up about 20 per cent of Iraq’s population, Sunnis had ruled the country since it gained independence in 1932. Their power dissipated after the fall of Saddam, and by boycotting January’s vote they were left with little influence in parliament. But they re-entered the political fray by demanding greater representation on the constitution-writing committee.

The charter’s final draft was vague on how to divide the oil wealth, but it guaranteed the Kurds’ right to maintain their autonomous region and paved the way for the Shias to create new ones. The question of autonomy for Kurdish and Shia areas is intertwined with oil. Those regions are home to the vast majority of the country’s oil resources, and Sunnis — who are concentrated in central Iraq — worry that they would not have a significant share of oil revenues under a federal system.

One proposal is for regional governments in oil-producing areas to keep five per cent of the revenue, with the rest going to the central government in Baghdad for distribution to other areas based on their population. But Kurds have pushed for setting aside a larger cut for regional governments. Sunnis, meanwhile, want all oil revenues to be distributed from Baghdad.

Because Sunnis decided not to boycott last week’s election, they could win enough seats in parliament to become a swing bloc. The Kurds, who are expected to win the second-highest number of seats after the religious Shia coalition, could form an alliance with several Sunni and secular Shia groups.

“We might see unusual alliances created in the new parliament because different groups will have different priorities on amending the constitution,” said Fakri Karim, editor of Al-Mada, an independent Iraqi newspaper. “There will be many backroom deals before agreements are made on a new government.” Most major decisions in the new parliament will require a two-thirds majority, and because the Shia slate is expected to win about 120 seats, all other blocs — Kurds, Sunnis and secular Shias — will have to make some accommodation with the dominant Shia bloc.

With a two-thirds vote, the National Assembly must choose a president and two vice presidents from within its ranks. In turn, this “presidency council” must unanimously select Iraq’s new prime minister and cabinet. The choice of prime minister must be ratified by a majority of parliament.

The main contender for the premiership is Adel Abdul-Mahdi, a vice president in the current government and a leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the largest religious Shia party. Abdul-Mahdi’s key opponent is likely to be Ayad Allawi, who served as interim prime minister from June 2004 until a new government took office in April.

—Dawn/Los Angeles Times News Service