‘Govt must raise participants number for better outcome of dialogue’
“ANY table to which any national dialogue returns must stand on correct principles in order to bring its parties together on clear concepts, the most important of which is that reform is not linked to people, if they migrate, it is disrupted, as much as it is related to people’s belief that sovereignty is for the nation, after the sovereignty of God’s law, and the application of the constitution,” columnist wrote for Al-Qabas daily.
“In other words, the linking of the dialogue with some specific person, shall mean that the immigration of these persons, could conduce to halting the relevant dialogue, rather any national dialogue, should be linked to the belief of the dialogue participants that the sovereignty is for the nation after the divine legislation and the application of the relevant country constitution and law in addition to the application of the principle of equality in a way that shall guarantee the rights and the freedoms, while all of the citizens should commit to perform their duties, as such the relevant violators, will be subjected strictly to the stipulated penalties.
“However, if we take into consideration the above, then it would not be so important who will sit around the relevant table of negotiations as long as the other believe in the same dogma, hence, one may infer that linking of the political reform process which all of us are looking forward to, have nothing to do with the return of the MPs from their place of shelter.
“Anyway, let us be more frank and say that the preparation of the ingredients of a cake of violations represents in fact, an extra government cup in addition to the three cups of the MPs. In other words, if we were involved in encountering corruption, for instance, as a society specialized in education, but the same had come from some members of the National Assembly’s Educational Committee, but unlike the above, we found a government insistence to implement the reform in addition to encountering corruption, where the prime minister and the minister of education and higher education and so on, have adopted the same attitude in this connection, given the fact that this is applicable to all of the remaining state sectors which are suffering from despotism of some MPs and their bargaining in terms of their dealing with the government in order to ingrain their interests in the institutions of the relevant sectors to meet the satisfaction of their voters and eventually form their electoral bases for the forthcoming parliamentary elections.
“Anyway, the national dialogue, should not be confined to the government and the National Assembly although the latter contains some esquire members who are working seriously to achieve the targeted reforms, but this Assembly, having its own mechanism that works on bargaining, quota system, denominational and tribalism shall mean return of the mechanism which is based on buying the conscience, parachute employment and the illegal practices from which the country had suffered for many decades during which, the MPs have neither solved the housing problem nor reformed the education system or handled corruption, the unemployment problem, the infrastructure and the population structure.
“Such being the case, we are not attaching a lot of hopes to them, hence, if the government is serious in dealing with the dialogue, we suggest that the government, should hasten to purchase a bigger table for dialogue in order to accommodate more people around it and eventually adopt new criteria for reform by inviting national personalities. This is in addition to some others -- members from the ruling family -- as well as personalities from the civil community institutions such as the welfare societies who last week had issued a statement in this connection because the latter, will play an effective role since they are the most capable people to diagnose the places of corruption.
“Moreover, they also enjoy more credibility towards offering ‘free of charge’ solutions and substitutes without any bargaining or asking for ‘parachute appointments’ let alone the youth should be also invited to lead this phase.
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“In the early eras of independence, the Arabs adopted the system of constitutional monarchies, party democracies, and the method of press freedoms, and these tools did not take the Arab peoples to their goal, so they rejoiced when military coups took place and brought their leaders to the rank of demi-gods,” columnist Sami Abdullatif Al-Nisf wrote for Annahar daily.
“The new repressive regimes raised the slogan of placing the trusted over the people of experience and competence and wreaked havoc and destruction in their countries and caused military defeats and backwardness
“Until the late seventies, China was under the leadership of ‘Mao’s thought’ and his cultural revolution, took the country backward country, until his colleague took over the leadership -- the genius ‘Deng Xiaoping’ who did not continue on the same path, but rather raised the slogan ‘It does not matter what color the cat is, as long as it catches mice’, meaning it does not matter what kind of system we adopt, socialist or capitalist, or a mixture of them, as long as it will lead China and its people to progress, advancement and wealth. This happened after the previous regime had caused the death of nearly 30 million Chinese from starvation.
“The legendary Chinese leader relied on sending missions to the best Western universities and then appointed them in political, administrative and technical positions. It was not based on selection, but on excellence and efficiency, and began to transform agricultural, hungry, backward China into a major industrial and technological state of the first class, and imposed on the Western companies a partnership with Chinese governmental and private companies and in a few years he was able to transform China from a poor country that only exported raw material into a highly advanced and wealthy large industrial force, which exports almost everything to the world.
“The population of China exceeds the population of the entire Arab world by three times. It is better for us than the Western example based on democracy and elections in order to rise and progress, and then we have to turn to the system of destroyed Middle Eastern democracies, which is a case of names similarity only to the aging Western democracies in order to destroy what we have built.
“At last -- I was on my way to China in the mid-nineties and I read in a Kuwaiti newspaper the complaint of the Minister of Education at the time, a famous thinker and intellectual about the problems and difficulties of education for 300,000 students in Kuwaiti schools and a woman on her success in completing the sixth phase of delivering modern technology to 900 million farmers, and transforming many of them from radish and tomato growers into manufacturers of cars and airplanes.”
“Document number 68, presented at the meeting of the Regional Committee for the Eastern Mediterranean of the World Health Organization (WHO) from Oct 11 to 18, is available on the WHO website and in the published agenda. It contains colors reminiscent of the school performance reports,” columnist Dr Hind Al-Choumar wrote for Al-Anba daily.
“Indeed, it is an unequivocal evidence of the failure of the Kuwaiti authorities to combat smoking despite studies and spending on anti-smoking programs and treatment costs due to smoking and its repercussions on health.
“Where is the imbalance? Is it in the performance of the Ministry of Health in the field of combating smoking in spite of the issuance of the international framework convention, laws, studies and expenditure accounts on the repercussions of smoking?
“If this document is read in a scientific and neutral manner, it indicates the failure of anti-smoking programs and justifies the need to reconsider them. This is in addition to letting the Ministry of Health assume its responsibilities in this regard by changing its name to the Ministry of Health and Anti-Smoking and transferring to it all the competencies regarding anti-smoking from other ministries, including oversight and implementation of the International Framework Convention Law.
“Also, the Ministry of Health must lead all efforts to combat smoking, including abuses in marketing and sales, interference in ban and permit decisions, government auctions on confiscated tobacco products brought into the country, and restructuring the anti-smoking program to take advantage of the capabilities of the Ministry of Health after its transformation into a ministry that includes anti-smoking.”