Oppositionists are also Kuwaitis
MP Safa Al-Hashim issued statements a few weeks ago demanding that the Ministry of Education should take action against an activist linked with political groups opposing the single-vote decree. I wrote in a column at that time defending every citizen’s right to express his or her own opinion, and argued that just because someone struck a stance in support or against any action of the government must not affect a person’s job or how his or her performance is assessed.
Every human being has the right to express an opinion or take a certain stand. Holding people accountable on the basis of opinions they have or the way they express these can only be done as per the law. If a person violates the constitutional regulations, he can be punished in accordance with the kind of violation he has committed. But when someone practices his or her constitutional right to freely express an opinion, then no one has any right to act against them or use it as an excuse to intervene in their work.
A local newspaper recently went too far in persecuting the oppositionists, or more precisely to ‘criminalize’ their actions, and pave the way to make the ‘government veto’ their future activities apart from spoiling their relationship with the state. The state is for everyone, and Kuwait is for every Kuwaiti. It is as much the country of those in the opposition as of the pro-government parties. It remains their country who voted in the polls, just as it is of those who chose to boycott the elections. Therefore, a newspaper has no right to incite the government against an oppositionist and demand that they are thrown out of a state department - the Supreme Petroleum Council in this case - just because they exercised their constitutional right to express their opposition to the single-vote decree.
I am often described as being among the most resentful to those who oppose the decree ostensibly meant to correct the electoral mechanism, but this does not give me or anyone else any right to goad the government into acting against them, or asking that the oppositionists be punished.
The position that MP Al-Hashim took a few weeks ago, along with that which the local newspaper expressed most recently, are considered a clear threat to the security and interests of everyone who opposes the government or expresses an opinion that conflicts with that of the government. It is a clear action of encouraging the government to adopt a policy of persecution and elimination. Faced with this situation, I believe that the opposition should consider taking legal action to help protect every Kuwaiti citizen’s right to express an oppositionist opinion, and stem the trend that is taking our polity down the road of persecution and elimination of political opponents.— Al-Qabas