O leaders of the new era … have mercy on your people so they will have mercy on you

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THE fact that cannot be overlooked by anyone, except those who benefit from the continued suffering of ordinary citizens, is that there are financial and economic forces that work to prolong people’s need for them. It seeks to harness all the possibilities available in its hands for the sake of its political interests.

Therefore, it refuses, for example, any solution to the issue of citizens’ loans. When the demand to drop the loans is intensified, it immediately rushes to provide justifications that are immoral or unconstitutional, and sometimes also links it to the loans of states.

In fact, Kuwait is not the only country in the world that suffers from this kind of crisis, but it is the only one, especially in the Arabian Gulf states, where the decision-makers do not see the suffering experienced by a large segment of its citizens.

This is due to the fact that the concerned institutions lack an impartial opinion based on humanitarian grounds. It is based on the ambitions of a group that banks its strength on making people at its mercy.

Before the modern state, the problem of loans for the ordinary needs of the people was the cause of a lot of poverty in the country. A class was formed at that time whose only concern was possession and monopoly, and to enjoy families’ loss of their homes due to a debt that may not exceed one hundred rupees.

These are the same ones who are standing today in the face of defaulters of simple loans, whose debts do not exceed a few thousand dinars. Their argument is that dropping loans is not social justice, and the reason is that they did not borrow.

These same people gave us this justification to obtain privileges, but we wonder if what they seek to gain from public money becomes social justice.

It is unfortunate that these people are working with their capacities to create enmity between the people, the regime and the ruling house, and political investment in this regard.

This is what we have been witnessing in the past few years when they began claiming that the defaulters are seeking to write off debts so that they can borrow again and then demand that the loans be written off once again.

These justifications are flimsy arguments and pure slander. In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the Emirates, Bahrain and Oman, the state dropped personal loans, and rescheduled some of them for 20 and 25 years. Here we are not talking about housing loans, but rather ordinary and non-commercial loans. This helped revive the commercial movement.

In Kuwait, there are many charitable societies that can direct zakat and donations to the inside. The Zakat House generates annual revenues of more than sixty million dinars, most of which is spent on offices and employees. If it gives the needy, whoever stumbles with a thousand dinars, for example, it gives KD 200, or to those who are in their favour.

Again, we say that he who did not need to borrow cannot argue that helping the distressed and insolvent is not social justice. Rather, he has to read the Constitution well.

Indeed, helping people is a religious, moral, and constitutional necessity unless the goal is to stir up strife between the state and the people!

Therefore, we renew our request to the leadership to consider this matter with compassion first, and then implement the constitutional and legal rules, and impose on charitable organizations and the Zakat House to lift the grievances of defaulters, because justice is doing the right thing.

By Ahmed Al-Jarallah

Editor-in-Chief, the Arab Times

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