‘Crises strengthen communities’

‘Society, govt working hand-in-hand’

“DURING the crises, societies discover themselves, and are able to know their weaknesses and strengths, and it seems that our crises in Kuwait strengthen the community, not weaken it. This was our situation during the days of the heathenish invasion of the country,” columnist, professor at Kuwait University’s Political Science Department, an advisor to Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Chairman of the Arab Fund for Human Rights wrote for daily.

“We faced the invaders with bare chests, without a government, as ministers were abroad, and we took to the streets in defense of the homeland without security. We did not know at that time anything or how things would work out, but there were no options but confrontation, and we consciously decided not to leave the country, although many of us were captured and others were martyred.

“That deadly crisis for seven months answered a question, which is how it was possible for a society that was divided horizontally, with a sharp sectarian dimension, to go beyond the stages of the current sectarian discourse, due to the repercussions of the Iraq-Iran war, and vertically, in sharp contradiction with the authority to dissolve the Parliament and suspend the Constitution since 1986 and the clash of popular powers with the government with the ‘Constitutional Movement’, or what is known as the Monday Diwaniyas and then the government.

“As a result of that crisis, the Constitution was reinstated, albeit within a set of contradictions, and the intensity of sectarian tension decreased significantly; it did not end, but it has receded, as many of its causes affect regional conditions.

“We did not learn much from the invasion, which was a historic opportunity to close many files, the most important of which was the consolidation of freedoms and the strengthening of democracy, and the restructuring of the economy, and among the most important was the bedoun issue.

“Apart from the above, the post liberation era saw the recklessness that was showed by the power, the corruption, the weakness of the political powers where the latter represented the majority in the National Assembly of 2012, it had hastened to enact unconstitutional law that represented by hanging those who might be involved in undermining the power the law that entered an endless tunnel.

“This crisis occurred where the government should be held accountable for the same because it is the government which is holding the keys to solution and the politicians should not be exempted from their responsibility.

“The country is now going through a new crisis, the components of which differ from the invasion crisis, but the atmosphere is similar, especially those who experienced the invasion like me who was exposed to arrest.

“But the most prominent similarity is the transformation of invisible coronavirus into a national issue, in which society cohesion and popular efforts have combined with government efforts.”

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Dr. Al-Najjar

“Before the issuance of Law No. 6 of 2010 related to working in the private sector it was subjected to numerous criticisms from several parties, including the Kuwait Bar Association. Among the fundamental criticisms was the failure of the law to take into account the owners of small projects by increasing the financial burdens on them and determining new obligations that had no life in the previous law, including, but not limited to, that the previous law excluded from the scope of its application owners of small stores that are not managed by machines and used fewer than five workers, while the current law contained them in its scope and burdened small enterprises owners with their exaggerated labor rights,” columnist

wrote for daily. “Today, the coronavirus has also threatened small business owners financially and their very future, not just in their health, and the reason for this is the current labor law. The situation before the issuance of this law said if the facility in which the employee worked was closed, and the closure was temporary, the contract does not end, but rather stops and the worker does not deserve his wages for the duration of the closure.

“The Kuwaiti Court of Cassation ruled, within the application of the previous law, that ‘the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait is a force majeure that will temporarily stop the work contract and not end it’. Today, the current labor law came with the second paragraph of Article 61, which is a defective, updated paragraph. It decided that the employer ‘is obliged to pay the wages of his workers throughout the entire or partial period of the facility’s disruption for any reason the workers have nothing to do it as long as the employer wanted to continue their work for him.

“Consequently, the coronavirus and its repercussions took us before a temporary legal impossibility and both the employer and/or the worker have nothing to do with it. However, the employer is obliged to pay the workers’ wages throughout the period of disruption even if the period is prolonged for several months. Either he pays the wage without work, and this is not fair, or he is forced to terminate his workers and bear the responsibility for this decision, and this is really costly.

“We hope and request the National Assembly to quickly amend the second paragraph of Article 61 of the current Labor Law. This is if they are serious about encouraging small business owners. Otherwise, we will face a severe wave of bankruptcies that will become popular in the face of our young people.”

“Is it reasonable that the tools of war that the governments use one day should be glove, masks, protective goggles and clothing, and that the soldiers are health workers and a military teams?

Yes, it is,” columnist wrote for daily.

“The world has prepared for the war that is happening now and the whole world is fighting as a single army against a very small virus that is not visible to the naked eye, but rather needs a microscope that can magnify the image more than its reality by more than two thousand times in order to fight the soldier who is fighting it.

“Italy is learning to surrender, China is resisting, Britain is broadcasting the decision to prepare to lose loved ones, and America advises house quarantine to protect from dying from this virus.

“Only 5% may need beds and a respirator from those who are exposed to the invasion of this virus, and if we calculated it well we will find that the 5% of the people of Kuwait is only equal to 200 thousand people who may need this and if we contemplate we will find that the beds that are in hospitals to receive cases like this are very few.

“All countries suffer from shortage of materials except our countries that we previously were considered Third World countries and not counted among the great countries such as America, Britain and other countries, but it has been proved exactly the opposite.

“Sitting at home, preventing gatherings, and imposing curfews except for necessity are the most important ways that made China, especially the city of Wuhan, which was considered the city of the global epidemic, not to register a new case for two consecutive days.”

“The year 2020 is a Leap Year, it comes once every four years, even though from its beginning it seems like four years, it may swallow years to come, and we may suddenly wake up as if we were in 2022 for example. Its last wonder was the coronavirus and its spread, and a sharp drop in oil prices, which once again the old question surfaced, that is being reiterated ‘What are we going to do without oil, or at prices barely covering a quarter of the salary item,” columnist

wrote for daily. “On this day, 54 years ago, on February 5, 1966, ‘Kuwait 2000’ play was performed. The play talked about an imagination of what the country will lead to in the event of oil depletion. Its author was our great artiste Saad Al-Faraj.

“It was presented with an interesting comic mode, and a number of great theater artistes participated in it such as Abdel-Hussein Abdel-Redha, Khaled Al-Nafisi, Ghanem Al-Saleh, Aisha Ibrahim, Jawhar Salem, Abdul Majeed Qasim, Maryam Abdul Razzaq and others. The play was directed by Hussein Al-Saleh.

“The society was optimistic at that time, and Kuwait was then ‘the Pearl of the Gulf’, and people treated the play with a comic eye, so they laughed and enjoyed what they saw. It was not in their minds that they were dealing with an upcoming reality, but rather fun, laughing satirical scenes.”

“In Kuwait, we have been in the frontline of the unique experience in investing revenues from oil – the country’s only source of income, by creating another source of income that protects it from the evil of economic blows which often plague the world,” columnist wrote for

daily. “Kuwait established an investment office in 1953 in London to invest oil revenues eight years before its independence, and then the office turned into what is now known as Kuwait Investment Authority at a time some countries in the region had yet to experience oil boom.

“This investment model has been very successful in many aspects. It survived difficult tests, most notably the Iraqi invasion of the country in 1990 when it managed the finances of Kuwait and played a historic role in the disbursement of funds to Kuwaitis in and outside the country.

“However, there are many observations that citizens are entitled to express towards the Kuwait Investment Authority, as it manages our money, wealth and reserves of the future generations, especially since the oil price decline is very likely as it happened in the past years and led to severe economic crises in Venezuela, Russia and many countries.

“Every investor in an investment fund around the world has the right to know his investments, size of the companies where his money is placed and the mechanisms of profit and loss, etc. This even means that citizens have the right to know the investment of their country, where the public fund is invested, and the size and amount of profit and loss.

“We do not know the size of the assets of Kuwait Investment Authority, which means, the size of our money and capabilities. We only find out through the Western press interested in our economy and publishes news on our acquisition of a company, real estate or foreign trade institution assuring us that transparency is totally absent.”

“I like those people who turn adversity into grants, those who make their own world no matter what the circumstances are, and whatever the challenges, they are people who have a special nature, and strong mental health that enables them to make their own positives,” columnist

wrote for daily. “The atmosphere of the curfew we live in the beloved Kuwait made people among us to convert it from grumbling and boredom to benefit, some of whom started memorizing the Holy Quran, taking advantage of the voices of readers spreading across the Internet, and some of them who started learning another foreign language taking advantage of the programs presented on the websites.

“It is my belief the direction that I referred to in the previous lines will have the magic effect on those who follow it, because it is on the one hand preoccupies the man and takes him away from following the corona virus news and on the other hand it will make him take benefit from this valuable time to the utmost.”

— Compiled by Zaki Taleb