At last they’re doing something good. They’re doing what we’re paying them to do, rather than waste our time with issues like allowing a singer to perform, veiled women to drive and security personnel to grow their beards. They’ve now got their teeth into something that could change the course of history in this fine country of ours.
MPs charged with the investigation of the bankruptcy of the Pension Fund and General Organisation of Social Insurance have submitted a 1,200 page report to the chairman of the House of Representatives which implicates 3 ministers for mismanaging the two organisations. It is not too far fetched that at least one minister will be indicted and removed from the cabinet. The detailed report is to be discussed on January 10th, 2004 in (supposedly) an open extraordinary session.
This session is a very important test of the new democratic movement and parliament. The previous parliament was dissolved 30 years ago due to similar circumstances, parliamentarians then wanted to know where the public money is going and to hold ministers accountable for their actions. If this session comes to pass and ministers are brought before the parliament and grilled without government interference, and more importantly without it yet again be dissolved, then we can say that democracy is here to stay.
I don’t know the details of the report obviously. Just little snippets of interviews with MPs Fareed Ghazi (committee chairman), Abdulnabi Salman, Abdulhadi Marhoon, Yousef Zainal and others who indicated that because of mismanagement the two organisations lost hundreds of millions of Dinars of the public- and private-sector workers pensions.
