The money tap in the National Assembly with government help satisfies the demands of populist deputies and this is a serious issue.

The number of greedy people who crave for the state’s savings and those who are unaware of its disastrous consequences for the future are increasing every day, and with it their appetite increases with every law issued by the National Assembly with government approval.

This is in the form of arbitrary increase in salaries or subsidies, or granting bonuses to the so-called front row workers, or paying the interest on citizens’ loans, or buying their vacations, or increasing student rewards, increasing social aid, and payment of the salaries to housewives, and distributing the benefits of the Public Institute for Social Security  to retirees.

 The state’s finance minister, who is responsible for its economy promised to disburse the said advantages.

Oh Honorable Minister, you have a duty to preserve the wealth of people and develop it for the coming days, and not to encourage them to spend or to put a lot of cash in their hands, because that includes urging undesirable extravagance, with the possibility of using such cash to buy poison (drugs).

I am not, nor anyone who shares my opinion, against the citizen’s well-being, but any increase in salaries or bonuses must be preceded by a serious study that shows the rates of cost of living and inflation rates, and not random decision-making, because our sons and daughters deserve better life.

If cooperation between the government and the National Assembly is something praiseworthy and required, and it deserves support and encouragement from all segments of society, it must aim primarily at adopting issues that guarantee the continuation of a decent life for the citizen, and not moving towards searching for populist decisions that lead to deepening the imbalances of the economy, and are passed at the expense of the sustainability and reform of the country’s economy.

We have seen several populist decisions, which began with postponing loan installments, and it seems that they will not end with the agreement to sell vacations annually, not to mention the large number of random and unique claims in the world, such as the idea of dropping catastrophic loans and others, to achieve narrow gains at the expense of the country’s economy and the future generations.

We want our deputies to be honest with themselves, before being honest with us, and to abide by what they have repeatedly said that they are against waste and that they are the protectors of public money, just as they must work to create a productive employee, not an employee who receives his salary and sits at home or in a coffee shop without work, and this is the core of administrative corruption, laxity and constant absence, then at the end of the year sells his ‘earned’ leave.

e-mail: [email protected]

By Ahmad alsarraf