Shenanigans of a minister

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The former Minister of Education, Bader Al-Essa, appointed Abdullah Al-Turaiji when the latter was a lawmaker, chairman of the Scouts Department at the Ministry of Education.

It is a very well-known fact that the role of an MP is to monitor the performance of a minister and hold him accountable. In spite of this the minister appointed the MP on a monthly salary, which means the MP could be sacked by the minister at any moment, in blatant contradiction, in the sense it is the sacked employee is the one who is supposed to monitor the performance of the minister.

At that time we called on the minister to revert on his decision, but it seems his calculations were different from ours, or perhaps he did so upon orders or as an obligation.

Another strange act which almost coincided with the appointment of the MP, one of the departments at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor granted a licence to a lawmaker to establish a 49-member (Kuwaitis) NGO under the title of ‘Scout Union of Arab Parliamentarians’.

Then MP Abdullah Turaiji contested the elections for the presidency of the Arab Parliamentary Union through a Kuwaiti local organization which was rejected by several institutions including the Secretariat of the Inter-Parliamentary Union whose Secretary later supported Al-Turaiji for the post and subsequently was invited to Kuwait to attend the first conference.

This happened in spite of the fact that the Scouts Union was a Kuwaiti Society and the parent body with its headquarters still exists in Lebanon and this prompted the Minister of Social Affairs and Labor to take a courageous step and declare the establishment of Scout Union of Arab Parliamentarians null and void and send the 50 members to their homes.

With the new Cabinet reshuffle, and appointment of the academic Mohammad Al-Fares, Minister of Education, I call upon him to restore the Kuwait Scouts Union to their rightful owners (the former administration) although I do not know personally know none of the members although the decision has already been issued by Minister Al-Subaih.

I thank the Al-Seyassah Publishing House for translating my works and publishing them in the Arab Times newspaper, the subsidiary of Al-Seyassah. The response from the vast readers, including several distinguished envoys of countries has been more than positive.

I believe the climate of relative freedom in which we live in Kuwait, has a role in pushing these ambassadors, and other non-Arabic speakers, to be interested in my articles written in the ‘Other Voices’ column in the local press which has the characteristics of a margin of freedom which is not enjoyed by all, or the majority of newspapers of other states in the region.

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By Ahmad Al-Sarraf

This news has been read 7938 times!