On April 25, 2016, a Monday afternoon — a day in the moderate spring season featuring light rain. Like every Monday, on that day too every Saudi citizen listened to the news bulletin. It was a bulletin that the Saudi people were eagerly waiting to listen to in order to know what decisions were taken by the weekly session of the Council of Ministers.

In that particular bulletin, the news broadcast by the media was not just an ordinary decision or a recommendation; but it was a decision that defined their fate and charted out their future when the Council of Ministers approved the Saudi Vision 2030.

Just hearing the term Vision was strange to the ordinary local people, and the number 2030 was even more strange as the mind is accustomed to the number five as a maximum for planning through five-year plans that are renewed every five years. The term Vision and the number associated with it raised eyebrows.

Almost six years have passed since this scenario. The Vision will complete its sixth year in April. Despite its short life, the Vision was able to turn surprise into admiration, thanks to all its programs, initiatives and successes.

The most beautiful and most impressive is the ability of the Vision to deepen its reality in Saudi society and to consolidate its feet on the path of the future from which it will not deviate. The Vision restructured everything and of which the most important thing was restructuring the culture of the Saudi society.

The secret is not in the Vision. The real secret lies in the visionary architect himself. Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman was able to put together a rational and realistic equation that corrects the wrong turns that the society had taken over the past decades.

A Vision that preserves and invests the historical gains; a Vision stemming from the sands of the Saudi land, from the mother culture of the Saudi people. This beautiful Saudi culture has never faded, but it was under the dust of intrusive ideas; ideas and values that the Vision wanted to nurture.

The visionary architect came from the heart of the lofty Saudi local culture, not only as a charismatic figure but as a true son of the fertile Saudi cultural environment to dust it off with boldness, betting on his clear understanding of the correct Saudi culture and his sound intellectual security.

Through the Vision, the value of patriotism has risen. The citizen, who was seeking modernity from other cultures, is now enjoying the beauty of his original culture around the clock.

The Vision 2030 proves in all its initiatives and programs that it emanates from the heart of the nation and has the same taste as the Saudi culture for the Saudi people.

Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman confirmed this in his latest interview with the US magazine “The Atlantic”.

“Our country is founded on a set views and beliefs that are based on Islam, on tribal culture, Arab culture, and unique attributes to Saudi culture and beliefs. That’s our soul...” This is really what is happening on the ground and in front of every follower.

The success of the Vision depends on the element of originality. Implementing a Vision of this magnitude and simplicity would not have happened had it not been based on the original culture of the Saudi people; the culture that welcomes others and coexists with them in peace.

The Vision opened the doors of the world’s cultures to the mind of the citizen. I cite the East Asian cultures just as an example.

Here soft power was used as one of the tools of the Vision. It attracted celebrities in various fields from those countries and provided them with the opportunity to learn about the culture of Saudi Arabia.

This is more than a genius planning. It was studied very diligently. There are people working with extraordinary intelligence behind it.

A team manages the gears of work, and another team that cares about showing the details of the image to the world. An integrated Vision with soft forces, in all their forms, that turns the tables on the negative people, who see only the dark side of everything.

The internal and external soft forces caught the world’s attention from everywhere. From Korea, for example, YouTuber Shumard documented a visit to the city of Jeddah, which he posted in November 2019, and it went viral and was viewed by millions in Korea itself with comments praising the Saudi culture. Soft forces bring Saudi culture to the heart of Korea. This was a victory in more than one way. This is just an example.

The visionary architect Prince Muhammad Bin Salman is an ardent lover of the Saudi culture and he was very keen on reviving it and ridding it of the boom culture and its detachments. He hails from the Saudi people and knows the nature of the people and provides what the people needed.

Therefore, he revived the true Saudi culture without distortion, but with a clear vision that encompasses all spectrums of the society. The largest group in the world is working to achieve a single Vision.

We are now on the threshold of the sixth year of the Vision. Opinions no longer diverge between doubt and faith. There are no longer voices claiming that it takes hundreds of years or that they are just dreams that will not come true.

As the Crown Prince emphasized in his interview that there is no person on this planet who has the power to foil the Vision 2030. Doubt has ended and certainty has begun that the Vision was set to become a reality. It was designed to achieve a cosmic vision.

It is not the path of a nation only but it is the path of an entire planet where the hands of the global citizen who is being prepared to work with his full energy and talents through the Human Capability Development Program, which was launched by the Vision architect at the end of 2021, as a clear indication of the crowning of the Saudi citizen as the most important element in the team of this ambitious Vision.

Today, the whole world is awaiting the Vision of Muhammad Bin Salman as it leverages the Islamic nation from a marginal global role to that of the elite countries.