Similarly, putting all public expenditures on-line would be helpful.
I recall that the city of Monterrey, Mexico-where I also used to work and teach-put the government's expenditure on-line in the early part of this decade. It has been beneficial in fighting corruption in that developing nation. It could do the same here in the Gulf. It helped government watchdogs in Monterrey immensely. This sort of transparency would certainly increase government accountability in spending and use of resources. It would also lead to more competitive bidding. Finally, it would lead politicians to think twice before raising certain pork barrel projects targeting a certain tribe or political elite.
In short, the elite in Kuwait have got to learn that at some point, their party will be over. However, with the Gulf Arab governments consisting of family members of many these elite or consisting of political hacks receiving benevolences from these same families, I don't see much happening from within soon in the Gulf. That is why it might seem that it would be better to focus on the abuses of China Inc., India Inc. or even American Inc. (or Japan Inc. again) in the coming decade
On the other hand, in the absence of many critical and extremely vocal Kuwaitis, non-Kuwaiti voices are needed. The non-elite Kuwaitis are already running up huge financial debts trying to half-way keep up with the monstrous wealth of the tiny elitist in-crowd that has run the land for far too long. Such groups of Kuwaitis are a divided bunch and don't have any leadership or political-economic savvy to take on the established elites.
With so many ex-pats working hard making Kuwait what it is and trying to make it better, we have got to voice our concerns and get our own WTO member governments to get Kuwait and other Gulf Arab states to play by the fair free market game-or prepare to surrender our futures to this sort of behavior more and more as the 21st century becomes the Asia century & dominated by Asian cartels from the Gulf to China or Japan--with far too little real experience in either fair or free trade.
NOTES
Etheridge, Jamie, "Gentlemen's Agreements and Developing Kuwait", FRIDAY TIMES (May 11, 2007), p. 3.
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