THE death of any nation – no matter how powerful it is – is by the hands of the so called “deep state”, which is formed on the sidelines of institutions to control them, setting its own laws, and imposing them on society. In Kuwait, it appears the deep state is stronger than all institutions, and is capable of disrupting rights, especially those conflicting with its interests. Therefore, there is no solution to any crisis involving investment in this country, which is pervasive in all institutions. In this regard, the story of a low income earner and a dignified thief almost applies to this situation.
One day, the low income earner, who was in his 50s, received his modest salary, and took the bus back to his home. In the bus, a thief was watching him. Given that the bus was crowded with people, the thief used that opportunity to pickpocket the man to steal his wallet which contained the salary. After a short while, the bus conductor asked the man to pay the bus fare. When he dipped his hand in his pocket, he realized that his wallet was gone. The man’s face reddened with shame as he stuttered to explain his situation, but the conductor failed to spare him the embarrassment, and went on shaming him for boarding the bus without the intention of paying the bus fare.
The thief was disturbed by the scene, and his “dignity” kicked in. He interrupted the conductor to tell him that he will pay the bus fare. The man was thankful for his noble act and prayed for him - the thief - by asking Almighty Allah to reward him with the best reward and render many more like him. The other passengers also began praising the thief’s decency and dignity. In our country, the deep state is trying to play the role of that thief, as it steals from the citizens, and when a crisis occurs, it pours its generosity on the people using the state’s money if it finds a benefit in the matter.
However, if there is no benefit, it opposes and begins to rant about social justice, the preservation of rights, and the proper distribution of national wealth. Today, the issue of loans and fairness to the citizens in their livelihood and incomes has come to the forefront once again, along with many fallacies woven by the deep state, the first and last beneficiary of this snowball that continues to roll. It therefore pressurizes the government through its tools to obstruct the plan to find a just solution to an issue that afflicts a significant segment of Kuwaitis, while it works on acquiring projects and services that exceed the volume of loans by two or three times, and annually generates hundreds of millions of dinars for them. From here, when the government argues that the loans are more than KD 14 billion, it is speaking in the language of the deep state that is trying to extinguish the debts of its cronies at the expense of the needy whose loans do not exceed KD 1.9 billion. They put together the commercial and personal consumer debts, and equates the well-off traders and the needy.
This is injustice in itself, as there are many solutions that we talked about previously, including rescheduling, dropping interest, lifting the travel ban, and allowing the defaulter to access suspended government services. These personal consumer loans may also be treated as the debts of Al-Manakh Stock Market, or that loans of the cronies can be handled lightly and reschedule them for forty and fifty years, with an increase in annual interest on them. This is despite the fact that the government knows that they are bad debts, but it is certain that these are the debts of the needy people who have no one to speak on their behalf in the deep state.
By Ahmed Al-Jarallah
Editor-in-Chief, the Arab Times
[email protected]/[email protected]
