It appears that every time lawmaker Safa Al-Hashem wants to make the news all she has to do is to say something against expatriates.
As an elected member of parliament, she knows that no matter how deplorable her comments, there is nothing anyone can do about it; moreover, her comments are mostly addressed against expatriates, the soft-target punching bag of the country.
Many voters in her constituency apparently support and applaud her views against foreigners, and even if they did not, there is nothing they can do about it until the next elections come around.
Similarly, some of her colleagues in parliament may not agree with her views, but then there is nothing they can do about it either. Kuwait is a democracy, and where else but in a democratic parliament can one safely voice the most outrageous comments and still get away with it.
Finally, there is absolutely nothing that the expatriates who are at the receiving end of her barbed comments can do. They cannot hold placards or organize public protests against statements by the lawmaker, and despite Kuwait’s democratic credentials, no expatriate will be called upon to directly confront the lawmaker in a television or radio debate. The best that expatriates can probably do against the parliamentarian’s unparliamentary comments is to whine on social media platforms.
But who knows, eventually the whining could get loud enough for people elsewhere to notice and take appropriate action, especially when the lawmaker travels abroad. The latest outcry against Safa Al-Hashem on social media came from people who were aghast that the MP would reiterate her calls for expatriates to be charged for the “air they breathe” and the “roads they walk on”.
Activists on Twitter described the lawmaker’s comments as “racist” and “very arrogant”, but some people defended her views as a solution to resolve the demographic imbalance in Kuwait.
In a press statement released yesterday, the outspoken MP had repeated her earlier demands that fees should be imposed on all services used by expatriates, including for the use of utilities, roads, infrastructure and other public services, as well as their remittances. She added that “what is needed is to charge the expatriates for everything, even for the air they breathe.”
She however made clear that she was not calling for deporting expatriates who serve the country, but only marginal unskilled laborers who overburden the country’s infrastructure. Yea, how would the country run without the domestic helpers.
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