05/03/2024
05/03/2024

THERE is a proverb in our Gulf folklore, which is “Too many captains will sink the ship”. This is similar to the common proverb “Too many cooks spoil the broth”. This means whenever there are many opinions, the decision will be spoiled.
This is due to the fact that if any country seeks development and progress, it requires one leadership that does not hesitate to take decisions or actions, even though sometimes the leadership’s opinion might err, but not overlooking the fact that accepting and amending the error is a virtue.
As for the chaos of opinion and decisions, it means ruin, because every captain will navigate as he sees fit. In this age of technology and the tyranny of “social media”, each of these captains has his own audience that influences others. That is how “the broth gets spoilt”.
History is filled with many leaders who left cultural imprints in their countries because their mission was clear, which was to achieve the interest of the nation and not their personal interest, and to bring the boat to safety without losses either in lives or in goods.
However, if there are many leaders, and each of them has his own supporters, this puts the leadership in the wind, which is not always what the ship desires.
In the past decades, we have experienced many abnormal situations due to the overlapping of powers between the executive and legislative authorities.
It seemed as if the boom of Kuwait was left at the mercy of the wind.
This was in light of the absence of an executive leadership that is aware of the sensitive circumstances that it has experienced, and continues to endure, affecting all paths - social, economic, and even security - as if we didn’t learn anything from the Iraqi invasion.
On the contrary, while the countries that were founded by civilizations sought to have a single leadership, and when they completed the stages of their social and economic development, they moved towards democratic development with confident steps. This is because they realized that a building that is based on a defect quickly leads to its ruin, and the efforts of people and years end up in vain.
In any emerging country there were neither 20 captains nor 66 commanders of the construction battle. You did not hear the saying “I am the only one who can do this”, as was the case in Kuwait for over the past decades in the name of democracy, from which we unfortunately took the negative side, which is the freedom to insult and slander, and left out the positive aspects.
As a result, the country experienced continuous decline, which made it appear in such a state of backwardness and social and economic turmoil.
In previous articles, we talked about a model country whose civilization was created by one person, and how, despite its small area and population, it became comparable to major countries.
It has reserved its place among nations as a model for law enforcement and urban, economic, social and political renaissance, after centuries of backwardness and poverty. When it was facilitated by a firm leader who knew what was best for his people and his nation, his state became strong.
For this reason, some Arab and Muslim thinkers said that “justice loses its content with the inability to implement it.”
A state will not be established “unless it gets blessed with a strong and just person who rules over his people without monopolization of power and authority and who brings prosperity to his nation”.
In Kuwait, it was said in the past that one captain is better than a million sailors.
By Ahmed Al-Jarallah
Editor-in-Chief, the Arab Times