Shame behind cloak of a fake democracy

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HIDING behind a fake transparent cloak of democratic rhetorics exposes faults more than concealing them. Unfortunately, this matter still prevails in backward democracies that have adopted the style but left out its content … and Kuwait is one of those countries.

This is due to the fact that we have not worked on developing our country. We have not learned from the experiences of other countries, as many of us still believe we possess the absolute truth, and that Kuwait is a great country. As a result of this arrogance, we imagine that the world is waiting for what we decide in order to implement it.

This fact takes me back to 1965 when the late Egyptian President Jamal Abdul Nasser had visited Saudi Arabia to sign the famous “Jeddah Agreement”. On that day, I had conducted a press interview with the late King Faisal bin Abdul Aziz.

During the interview, I was telling the late king, “Major countries have announced their support for this agreement…” when he interrupted me to say, “But there is one superpower that has not yet welcomed the agreement”. I asked him, “Which country is that?” and he said, “Kuwait”. I then asked him if this should be published, and he answered, “Yes”.

The reason for me to say this is that the majority in the National Assembly are Arab nationalists. The position of the extremist leftists is in support of the Palestinian cause to the extent of attacking some Gulf countries and calling them “Arab reactionary”. This led to disturbing relations between Kuwait and some of these countries.

In fact, these MPs were the ones who reconciled with those rhetorics and made deals with well-known influentials in order to market their ideas. They closed their eyes to several wickedness, which in turn led to laying of the foundations for the rampant corruption that is prevalent today.

With the change in the balance of political forces in the country, and with the control of the enemies of joy over the National Assembly, the situation continued in terms of weakening national and regional cohesion. This was clearly evident in 2013 when the GCC countries decided to support Egypt in confronting the Muslim Brotherhood Group after the outbreak of the June 30 Revolution.

This was followed by the announcement by the late Amir at that time, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad, of supporting it with four billion dollars.

On that day, the MPs of the Muslim Brotherhood Group had submitted a proposal to prevent the Amir from donating more than five million dollars to any country, in an attempt to stop Egypt’s recovery from that malaise. They thus wanted the state to break consensus by seeking to split the unity of the Gulf ranks.

It is unfortunate that Kuwait tweets outside the Gulf and international flock, and pushes itself into isolation through the adventures of these dominant currents through the fake democracy of the National Assembly.

This comes at a time when the Palestinians, both in Gaza and Ramallah, are negotiating with the Israelis. Normalization between them is proceeding in full swing, whereas our parliament supported the intensification of penalties to up to life imprisonment for anyone who is implicated with Israel. It seems as though the whole world would today refrain from establishing relations with the Hebrew state just because a “superpower” named Kuwait approved this law.

Let us be realistic … Kuwait is not an island that is isolated from the world. Therefore, it is important to deal with countries according to our interests, and not to satisfy the sentiments of some political currents that control the Parliament.

It is such currents’ decisions and laws taken over the past years that had led to the country’s backwardness and closure, and the repelling of investment opportunities. All this has started to provoke the anger of Kuwaitis who today have discovered that they have fallen victim to a democracy that is based on tribal and sectarian alliances and a game of interests, and has nothing to do with the real democracy.

By Ahmed Al-Jarallah

Editor-in-Chief, the Arab Times

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