Power of religious parties

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He graduated from engineering college and succeeded in opening a consulting engineering office which has received huge government contracts that put him on the top perhaps because he was a member of the National Assembly for several terms; however he decided not to run for elections after he lost in the last elections.

He was also a member of the General Secretariat of the Muslim Brotherhood, and one of the founders of one of the movements which adopts the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, internationally and locally. His biography is no different from the biography of any successful businessman and known politician.

In 2018, a seasonal rain wave hit Kuwait and caused  the disclosure of many projects, including road projects, when almost 80% of the upper layer of the roads of Kuwait gave way causing gravel to fly and material losses to tens of thousands of citizens and residents, the rain also was the cause of a modern city transformed into a swimming pool.

The report of the State Audit Bureau, at the request of the National Assembly, on the repercussions of the wave of rain in Kuwait in November 2018 revealed a significant failure in the performance of some consulting offices in the area of planning and design of the modern city, which lacked major services and environmental problems with the knowledge of the ministerial committees before the rains came pouring down.

The Bureau recorded 13 observations on some engineering offices concerning the lack of performance in terms of planning and design, the lack of means to protect the city from floods, the studies were limited to issuing legislation regulating the work of the Public Authority for Housing Welfare (PAHW), shortcomings in applying regulations of qualifying the consultancy offices, excluding many qualified companies from tendering, and the shortcomings of the institutions and ministries of state related to the poor quality of the implementation work, and many more, such as the inability of government agencies to implement the qualification criteria adopted by PAHW for consulting houses by excluding 21 qualified companies out of 30.

Here too the situation is almost normal and many businessmen and owners of engineering offices are exposed to.

Then came the official recommendations to stop all convicted parties named in the report of the Audit Bureau from participating in any future projects until identifying the extent of responsibility of each involved party, and this procedure is similar in nature of temporal custody to any person charged with a major crime and his imprisonment for fear of his involvement in new crimes, pending a ruling showing his responsibility.

Suddenly, the party machine moved to defend the accused and succeeded in issuing a counter-report to the report of the Audit Bureau. Such report not only lacked impartiality, but also ignored and insulted all the investigations and reports of the professional regulators when it demanded the acquittal of all convicted companies, and protecting them against any sanctions and to halt any resolutions related to excluding them from future projects.

Bloggers and honorable lawyers stood against the legal wording of the Grievance Committee’s report and exposed it. MP Ahmad Al Fadhel took the ball and asked how an individual who is neither a deputy nor a minister still has the power and influence to make members of the government vie for their colleagues in the same government? It was necessary for the fatwa and legislation to intervene to refute the report of grievances not for its ambiguity, but also because it did not include any resolution requiring the tenders committee to lift the sanctions against the companies accused.

This has happened, but the party machine has also intervened and paid visits and made contacts with influential government bodies, the fatwa and legislation and the CTC to pass the Grievance Committee’s decision.

We conclude our article with a question: How can a citizen with all this influence not have access to the decision-maker, hit the government with the government, and form a committee to look into grievances, participate in the selection of its members, and halt the implementation of the suspension of decisions if some state institutions are not infiltrated by these organizations?

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By Ahmad alsarraf

This news has been read 9958 times!