The Importance of Culture to the Average Kuwaiti (Part 2)

The educated Kuwaiti will, at one point in his or her life, be responsible for a family, and will begin to think about how to sustain this family for the years to come. Of these educated Kuwaitis, the CK will strive to suck out as many concessions as possible (and in some cases, with wanton disregard for the law!) in order to sustain life and shelter, while the PK will strive to keep working ethically as hard as possible towards the same goal. The PK will resolve to employ his or her hard-earned academic qualifications in order to obtain the required basic needs of job security and all that follows, while the CK will turn to the loudest voice of mistakenly-assumed ‘opposition’ who depend on nods & winks of assurances from shadowy figures within the Government Apparatus, to bravely attack members of the very same Government.

The PK will argue, at some point, that Kuwait needs a unified voice that demands results while the CK will argue that THEY demand concessions, and all this happens under the watchful eye of the Government, who will stop at nothing in order to protect the continuity of itself, not the State. Furthermore, by greasing the wheels of the CK, by way of grants of KD200 and an overall increase in salaries (a couple of examples!), the Government ensures that at least one side can be bought off and silenced-for a time. The CK won’t mind, as long as their pockets are lined with free money and their roofs are water-proof. The PK, on the other hand, who are effectively doing all the hard work in the first place, remain at a loss as to how to best secure their interests; Do they struggle for all of Kuwait, or just their own corner of it?

Of course, the PK isn’t without fault either, for it is the wealth of some of them that has allowed the business captains to flourish and amass vaults of money, and who will begin to use this wealth to serve their own political agenda. Being wholly Capitalists, they would resort to huge promises of improvements in the Private Sector that will ultimately-they claim-serve the population of CK’s and rising PK’s alike, feeding on the hard work of one and the easily-accumulated wealth of the other in order to graft themselves a separate layer of society that would be untouchable and accountable to no one. The Government will not mind them either, as long as it pushes some Government-backed loans and mega-projects towards them they’ll be quiet for some time too. So now, the CK is silenced, the PK is silenced, and all are feeding upon the wealth off the State’s Oil pipe in one form or another, with the Government controlling the valves for both. The age-old strategy of “Divide and conquer’ begins to take shape.

(...to be continued)