The significant success of last year's inaugural Future Investment Initiative ((FII)), which was nicknamed "Davos in the Desert," was not accepted by certain individuals outside Saudi Arabia.
In recent weeks, some saw an opportunity to launch media campaigns calling for a boycott of the conference in the wake of the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
That resulted in some Western officials, corporate executives and media bosses canceling their participation in the conference as a symbolic step, and to discourage potential harassment of their organizations.
Such media campaigns cannot however