Your Highness the Prime Minister …shield ‘defense’ from arms brokers

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A COUNTRY cannot rise without modern and good infrastructure. It also cannot reform if its legislations are backward, propelled by the conviction among officials that the country is in a transitional mode.

Unfortunately, such conviction becomes permanent and entrenched in the minds of officials, let alone the politicians, while the reality is completely the opposite. Therefore, bringing about change becomes difficult, and whatever rhetoric the officials adopt becomes almost impossible to implement in reality.

There is no doubt that the current government has a lot of momentum that qualifies it to change the work method that prevailed in the country for nearly 30 years. It also has a good opportunity to get out of the bottle of daily routine.

However, if it does not take advantage of this opportunity, it will have to work on consolidating its inability to keep pace with the developments of time, and should accept facing arrows from all directions.

Today, this government has the opportunity to develop the infrastructure including roads, airports, transportation, communications, and agricultural and industrial security. It must also look at the labor force in the country in a positive light, and employ all this in order to get it out of the impasse it has been living in since 1992.

This opportunity can be successfully used by deviating from the bad habit of assigning projects to a group of local companies, which unfortunately did not work on developing themselves and took the easy way by building a deep state of institutions, the mission of which is to restrict projects to five or six of them or to monopolize them through the so-called local proxy.

In most countries of the world particularly the Gulf, governments seek the help of international companies directly without any intermediaries, and grant them privileges that help them complete the work entrusted to them efficiently. They sometimes finance projects that are either related to housing cities, roads, bridges, and other infrastructure requirements in the state.

This is what the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman did, but Kuwait is still operating with an outdated mentality that caused the infrastructure to be underdeveloped, and ended in road disasters, severe loss of life and property, and waste of time.

Real reform begins with a firm decision that does not provide protection for anyone, because the interest of the state is above all considerations. This is what King Salman bin Abdulaziz did when he issued directives to the Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman when the process of cleaning the state from the corrupt and bribe-takers began. The country was hence able to recover about USD 200 billion in the purge operation that was dubbed as “Operation Ritz Riyadh”.

That operation also helped in recovering more than 3.5 billion square meters of land from the so-called “Shabak princes”. The UAE had settled this matter a long time ago when it began a difficult accountability for some of the corrupt. Qatar imprisoned its minister of finance and some officials because they encroached on public money.

This can happen in Kuwait, through which the state can regain its health. It can also benefit from the experience of direct contracting with international factories and companies without an intermediary.

In this regard, we have a best example in the “Drone” military deal. This is credited to the acting Minister of Defense Sheikh Talal Al-Khalid. We are also optimistic about the current Minister of Defense Sheikh Ahmed Al-Fahad, who seems to be following in the footsteps of his predecessor.

Unfortunately, we wake up daily to one scandal and sleep to another, making it seem as if Kuwait was infected with the virus of misappropriation of public funds, institutions, and corruption that made Lebanon a failed state along with Iraq and Iran.

We, as a state and people, have the ability to get out of this impasse if there is a definite desire to develop the infrastructure, which is an essential part of sovereign wealth.

By Ahmed Al-Jarallah

Editor-in-Chief, the Arab Times

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