The corrupt
or submit to an influential person.
If you look at ministerial data, parliamentary minutes and speeches of MPs since the first parliamentary term; you will see that all of them vowed to combat corruption and threatened the corrupt.
However, the same people are exhausting all means to get around the law in order to cement corruption in all establishments up to a point where Kuwait, this county of not more than a million and a half citizens, appears like it wants to break the world record in underdevelopment and lack of transparency.
All Abrahamic religions are based on reforming mankind and faith entails piety and good deeds; but when it comes to us, you find those claiming to be pious working towards destruction of establishments as if these are not theirs, or Kuwait is not their permanent residence. They do this despite being aware of the fact that whatever they destroy today will come to haunt them and the future generations.
Therefore, we should not be astonished if we have been in the circle of destruction for the past six decades. This has been happening in a systematic mode of corruption, up to the extent that we have neither gained development nor eliminated corruption.
Several countries have experiments on eliminating this pandemic or limiting it to the least possible rate. Their methods have become fixed formulas for work in the public sector.
Due to these formulas, such countries have gained amazing development; but in our country, the eyes of the corrupt do not blink while bragging about fighting corruption when a project is halted — a project of the size of the northern oil fields which would have generated billions of dollars for Kuwait and provided about 20,000 job opportunities.
Another instance is the cancellation of the Dow Chemicals project, which made the State incur losses that reached $2.5 billion just because someone did not get his share of the deal; let alone the fact that the same person claims to have halted the deal in the interest of the public and future development.
It is only in Kuwait that anti-corruption laws and agencies are almost the same size as several public establishments, yet no one has been arrested for Even the rulings issued in this regard get squashed easily by lawyer due to many loopholes through which a camel could fit.
In fact, it is only in Kuwait where the corrupt can cover the ‘sun’ of their corruption with a sieve. Worst of all, they are reelected or appointed as senior officials in the government, and at the very least, one of them will be referred for retirement without being held accountable.
If the situation is like this when the entire government and establishments are unable to curb corruption; why not have development and growth in spite the prevalence of corruption?
Why not adhere to the traditional adage, “Give the bread to the baker even if he’ll eat half of it?”
Once that happens, at least we will see projects that will pull us out of the underdevelopment circle which we have been going around for decades. We should not wait for the latest global report to sound the alarm bell for all officials to carry out their national responsibility or we are left to curse the dark when we have not lit any candle of hope.