Survival of the nation and lives of people at stake in ‘Kuwait Roulette’
“THERE is a deadly game called ‘Russian Roulette’, in which a person places a single bullet in a revolver, spins the cylinder, places the muzzle against head and pulls the trigger. If the player, the opponent is given the chance to do the same and try his luck, and of course the winner is the one whose opponent is killed, and he wins the bet, and waits for another opponent,” columnist Sami Al-Nisf wrote for Annahar daily.
“In the ‘Kuwaiti Roulette’ a life of an individual or his own money are not at stake but the life of people and the survival of a nation.
“The Kuwaiti roulette has been played more than once in the past, whether during the Souk Al-Manakh stock market calamity in 1982 when the entire economy was destroyed and people lost their savings, to be more precise they lost their lives.
“It also happened in the summer of 1990 when we lost the homeland and the lives of citizens, and it is no longer possible to dig into the game of the ‘Kuwaiti roulette’ and to complete the approach to adventure and gambling and wait for the next catastrophic results.
“It is not every time that the pot of clay survives in light of the so many unprecedented internal and external dangers and challenges around us that are greater than ignoring them or relying on the coincidences and unseen things to save us as the case was in the past.
“We must stop gambling and relying on luck like gamblers, but to rely on proper systematic planning and stop playing – with or without intent – the game of ‘Kuwaiti roulette’ by appointing intelligent, honest people from among citizens, residents and relevant international experiences in order to draw a realistic, applicable and guaranteed future map so that a young government shall be powerful enough to fight corruption and capable of transforming dreams into a reality, not for daytime nightmares as was the case over the past decades.
“Lastly, one of the axioms that we miss a lot is that you cannot continue walking the same road and expect to reach a different place, just as you cannot build a house on the same ground which has collapsed in the past more than once because the ground is not strong and it cannot withstand the weight of the same amount of iron, cement, rubble and sand to prevent it from collapsing one more time.”
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“We ordinary citizens want three things from the government. We want it to provide us easier, simpler and faster services. If it is able to provide its services in this form, then we will support it and if not, and this is more likely because of this great mythical being (the public sector) through which it works therefore it must adopt the open market policy as it is the best option that can provide the ordinary citizen with those three things and remove the permanent headache from the government,” columnist Nasser Al-Abdali wrote for Al-Qabas daily.
“The brothers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have taken a historic decision to transfer all service sectors to the private sector, including education and health, and I believe that this decision will help the sisterly Kingdom to reach new horizons based on development and advancement and launch an atmosphere of competition between different companies to provide better services, as well as introduce – and this is important – the atmosphere of competition between the workforce which makes those forces work in full swing to develop their performance.
“The public sector has killed every desire of the employee to develop his performance, and thus the performance of the institution, especially in the Gulf countries, which have placed this sector in the framework of distributing wealth to citizens.
“This decision, despite good intentions, has made most of our youth a burden on the state in general, to the extent that they consider such absurdity as an acquired right that no one should touch and this laziness and dependency has applied to most of the state’s sectors and institutions which leads life to a dead end.
“If the government wants to develop the nation, there is no choice but to get rid of all government sectors, especially the service ones, and leave them to market management provided that this decision is preceded by a qualification for the private sector after the government has crippled it for more than six decades, and to develop laws that regulate the work of this sector to guarantee the rights of national workers on the one hand and to ensure better service on the other hand.
“The supposed private sector is not a gift to anyone but an integrated national project to lead to the transfer of the country from one state to another.”
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“It is a known fact that an MP is the one who is in need of the voter and the people. He is the one who goes to them to get votes. Previously, one would see MPs in Kuwait participating in occasions of joy and sorrow, going from a funeral in one place to a wedding in another, visiting the sick in hospitals, and going from one government entity to another seeking the completion of transactions”, columnist Abdullah Ali Al-Qabandi wrote for Al-Qabas daily.
“They even go to the extent of paying from their pockets. Some rush to donate blood to the needy among the people of their constituencies. Some adopt everything that is contrary to their opinions and principles for the sake of winning over people. In short, an MP goes to the street whenever he is asked to do so just for the sake of getting votes.
“Every year, the mock migration of families from one constituency to another begins, and the demographics change. You find in every house a family, which is supposed to consist of a father, mother and children under one name, but ends up having a number of Kuwaiti families, as though their house is a residential tower. The owner of the house goes to government agencies to affirm that these families are renting with him. Of course it is a lie, and he may ask them for the value of the monthly rent.
“This ugly and ridiculous situation is being repeated every year perhaps with the knowledge of some government employees. The choice will not be based on competence, logic and a program of work, but rather on the number of subjects transferred from one department to another. How pathetic is this!”