Teacher Khamis Najm ... ‘Oil’
the late khamis najm, an english teacher at the al-siddiq school, was always mocking us in class. we were always teasing him and one of the students took advantage when he was busy writing on the blackboard and at the top of his voice said ‘oil’.
that saddened the teacher and sometimes made him lose his temper and hoped for the end of oil, to see then what will happen to us, but he did not live enough to see his ‘hope’ fulfilled. however he benefited from the oil and its power after he obtained citizenship, and he lived among us for the rest of his life.
i remembered the wishes of the deceased as i read warnings issued by international banks and particularly the international monetary fund days before that we must not fully rely on oil revenues, and must initiate painful reforms before our wealth begins to deplete right in front of our eyes within 15 years with the decline in global demand and price.
consequently, our countries have no choice but to accelerate the pace of economic reforms to avoid becoming “bankrupt”, stop waste and go after the thieves of public funds, recover stolen money, expedite the trials of embezzlers and counterfeiters, undertake necessary and ‘painful’ reforms in our payroll and subsidy systems, and stop the absurd demands from citizens to drop loans. to implement all this, it is necessary to make the government program binding and implement it in the strict sense of the word.
in this regard, colleague fakher sultan wrote for al-shafaf on 5/2/2020, that the government prior to 2010 was able, to a large extent, to hide numbers, information, and documents related to corruption, and was also able to control the general conditions, from political, economic and social point of view, and to transform ‘corruption’ into what can be called “political calmness”, and the external factor had no role in influencing these conditions, in addition to the weakness of the internal forces.
however, with the rise of the opposition’s voice, the weak economy and the inability to control it, our entry into the era of globalization and the spread of the use of means of communication, in addition to growing influence of global pressure forces, and a sense of the need to respond to their requirements, all of this reduced the prestige of the government and its ability to accept challenges, and this is what we saw in previous governments and their inability to face any interrogation, weak or absurd, and therefore we call on the government of his highness the prime minister to continue to deal seriously and firmly with files of corruption, and that this becomes one of its priorities.
french thinker victor hugo says: heart attacks occur when blood clots block an artery, and a flood occurs when a stream of water is blocked by the river, and there is a revolution when you impede the future of a people.
we in kuwait are far from the revolution, as things are still under control but the government has to take the initiative, do away with the parliament for a year or two, and make all required reforms as quickly as possible before things run out of control.
