Land allocation 'conspiracy' slammed - Govt warned against 'random naturalization'

Riyadh Al-Adasani and Ahmad Al-Fadhl

KUWAIT: Opposition MP Riyadh Al-Adasani yesterday rejected government claims to borrow from domestic and international markets to finance the budget deficit resulting from low oil prices. The lawmaker said several ministries and government bodies are holding around KD 20 billion in profits when they should have transferred them to the finance ministry. In addition, several ministries and state institutions are not doing enough to collect government debt from consumers, totaling KD 1.3 billion.

The government had sent a draft law to the National Assembly to raise the debt ceiling to KD 25 billion before it withdrew the bill last week amid stiff opposition among MPs. Under Kuwaiti law, the government cannot borrow without a law from the Assembly. Adasani again highlighted a bribery scandal in which around 13 current and former MPs had been accused of accepting bribes for their votes.

The lawmaker showed that the MPs accepted around KD 51 million in bribes, revealed by an increase in their bank accounts in 2011. Thirteen cases were referred to the public prosecution, but it shelved the issue for legal reasons. Adasani said that he and some other MPs are trying to revive the legal prosecution of these "corrupt" MPs.

Meanwhile, former opposition MP Khaled Al-Sultan yesterday criticized the government and the security agency for chasing online activists while ignoring a "big conspiracy" in which an Iranian company with links to the Revolutionary Guards was granted 200,000 sq m at a vital site. The allocation was made for an Iranian steel company on the southern coast, and the issue was raised in the Assembly last week.

Separately, MP Ahmad Al-Fadhl yesterday warned against "random naturalization", saying that some people tend to provide forged documents and the government does not know the origins of others after suspected forgery in nationality files. He urged lawmakers who fear the impact of forgery on citizenship not to sign on a nationality law that could undermine national identity. He said that granting Kuwaiti citizenship for excellent services could be misused, like what happened in the past. Last week, the Assembly overwhelmingly passed a law stipulating citizenship for 4,000 people - mostly bedoons - during this year. The law aims to resolve part of the problem of 120,000 stateless people who are claiming Kuwaiti citizenship.

By B Izzak