Today morning another demonstration was taking place outside the House of Parliament. This time though the crowd was a lot larger and more organized. Crowd barriers were also place alongside both sides of the road in front of the parliament building. While sitting in my car I watched the large crowd which surprisingly included a lot of high school students cross the road while yelling out their demands. I am not sure but according to their banners I think they want the local government to drop all the personal debts of Kuwaitis. I shot a short video of the demonstration which you can watch by clicking [Here]
ps: here is a higher resolution picture of the one above if you want to attempt to read what it says on their banners. [Picture]
21 replies on “Another demonstration”
Everyone are calling for more demonstrations across the Arabic world following the steps of the Lebanese and what they are doing nowadays…
For all people who want their debt cut down starve them for a month and see how their attitude changes. Some of these have simply made a mess of kuwait .I mean you have phreaking every thing at the tip of ur hand and u want ur loan to be forgiven.simply stupid.
I really think it’s a waste of time to go out in demonstration for such a reason. I don’t care about dropping debts because some people take loans for buying cars or traveling, not an essential part of living, so it’s not fair for everyone else.
But I wish they’ve gone out for a better cause like trying to pursue the government to make lands more affordable like everywhere else around the world.
land is expensive in kuwait?? hmm i didnt know that seeing as there is so much of empty land all around going to waste…
If this demonstration leads to debts being written-off, there will be ANOTHER demonstration with all those people who already paid off their debts on time.
p.s. land prices are high. i was looking at a small piece on the beach somewhere in the salmiya/rumaithiya area… more than 50million KD.
yeah i saw them too this morning.
morons.
my $0.02,…. which ironically those idiots probably cant even afford 😀
$800 million to Lebanon
$200 million to Yemen
Hundreds of millions more pissed away.
F%ck that.
Cancel the Citizen’s debts.
I think i liked the other solution some people are demanding which is to give each Kuwaiti family 30,000 dinars.
This way its fair. canceling debts isn’t fair because some people dont have debts, others have small debts and some have huge debts.
Sorry to say it, but they are STUPID and have not idea what are they asking for. Ask any one who works in Bank and they will tell you that more than %80 of those with debts for NO good reason! ( luxury cars – Travel – Stock markets!! and the stupid list gose on…). But there are Few of them with good reasons ( buying a house etc ). The majority of kuwait are pissed of from the government way of Dealing with the Financial surplus that wont last long, spending it on corrupted projects and giving it to countries that were/still HAPPY to see kuwait burn to the ground!!
I think it is a bad idea to cancel debts.. its not economical and our country is going to go down the drain at the rate they want it.. Its as if they were given this money from the government. Then most of the stock market will go down because of the instability of our financial institutions.. Every country lives with its debts, but they shouldnt take loans if they arent able to pay it back.. I know its not as simple as that, but at the rate these people are going they are pushing Kuwait off the edge!
Laziale, it’s true that many of the debts are taken for frivolous items – but it’s not anyone’s prerogative to question how people spend their money!
I’m Kuwaiti and I’m fed up with the Government pissing away billions of dollars a year into other countries whilst Kuwait looks like (in many places) a 3rd World Rat Hole.
No one is saying not to donate to the needy, but fix your own goddamn problems before fixing other peoples.
Give me new streets, new schools, new medical facilities, a 777 which works, help the poorer foregin laborers to have decent housing – before sending off millions to other countries.
It’s complete and utter bullshit.
Zooks, your theory is incorrect. Less Debt is better for the economy not worse. Less debt means the consumer will go out and spend more. It’s a simple cycle.
If the government canceled debt (which they should up to a limit) – it means they are paying off the loans from THEIR pockets.They are not bankrupting the lenders.
What will happen is NEW loans will be taken out, which will then spurn a new economic boom…..and so the cycle continues.
Stupid idiots
Cancelling consumer debt is practically impossible, because that means that the Governement will have to replace the consumer loan book at banks. This means that the government will pay less interest as a bulk borrower with governement rating. This means that the banks spread will be lower, which means less profits. This will depress the stock price of banks which are more than 40% of the market cap, thus dragging the whole stock market down. It will take time until banks start getting more deposits to give back as consumer loans on the other hand. Banks can only grow at the rate of deposits they get. This means that people with releived debts can now start saving money instead of paying debts down, but will they save?
Another impracticality of releiving debt is major INFLATION in the market which is already witnessed as in the case of land prices. Since after the releive of loans, it will be difficult to get loans as banks will need the deposits to support it, so consumer loan growth will be capped at savings growth. Inflation this time will be witnessed in perishables and other household products.
In general releif of consumer debt is the worst thing that can done, even the handing out of cash. Inflation must be controlled, and having the cash flood gate open can lead to serious economic consequences.
If they drop the debts the price of everything will go very high because of the amount of liquidity that will be in kuwait.
70 yrs before they were all living in the desert fucking camels, chopping each others heads off. . . 70 yrs from now they’ll b rite back were they were.
No offence to nybody but just a figure of speech that the way they’r handling their financial situations it won’t take long before it all gets pissed away.
Toxy.. the financial ‘boom’ your talking about, does it include HUUGE inflation? Especially when every thing is a monopoly in kuwait???
I say the goverment has opened the door to this by allowing such huge amounts to be givebn away to states on a relular regular basis. Its their fault. Thats what reprecusions you get from having a weak foriegn policy of just giving money out to yemen, jordanian king, palestine, iraq, sudan, syria, and others that turned against us during the saddams aggression on kuwait.
yet we never learn.. we still give them. I say NO to PAYING OFF LOANS, NO TO PAYING SO MUCH TO OTHER CONTRIES, AND YES TO INVESTING OUR SURPLUS ON KUWAITI PROJECTS, AND OPENING KUWAIT UP FOR FOREGN INVESTMENT, AND YES TO ACCOUNTABILITY AND NO TO CORRUPTION!!! can i get a witness.. aymen!! lool
What a wonderful country! First they give away KD200 – just because they can. And soon, whoever has taken out a loan doesn’t have to pay it back!
I wonder why people did not demonstrate this much when the money was given away to Lebanon and Palestine, etc. They didn’t give a shit then because it wasn’t their money.
Now they are using the donated money as an excuse to avoid paying their own debt. Smells like cheap opportunism to me.
I’m not Kuwaiti – I’m not having my debts cleared – so I say let the debt be dropped and let the Kuwaitis be happy! But – without wanting to generalize – as if all the wasta and payouts were not enough, I just hope this is not another one of those things that insulates many of the younger Kuwaitis from how things work in the real world. Its about time they stop being coddled and lived responsibly like everyone else.
KEEP DREAMING
Debts payoff is a disaster. Our economy is messed up because government (actually government officials) controls everything and by issuing laws that kills small investors who want to compete. Everyone is a stock market expert in Kuwait, they take loans to invest in the stock market and they lose it all. First rules of investing in the stock market say “never take a loan and buy stocks” because you cannot recover the interests whatever your profit is.
Instead, they should demand privatization of the government owned businesses, better healthcare (make hospitals private and provide people with health insurance)…. The list goes on.
Unfortunately, our government is acting like there is no tomorrow. Things are going from bad to worse.