Qaisar Metawea Al-Madinah WE recently published a news story about the National Anti-Corruption Commission (Nazaha) uncovering corruption in the Makkah municipality concerning the distribution of land grants. The municipality gave out pieces of land in gratis to the relatives and acquaintances of a number of its officials. A royal decree issued last year had prevented the municipalities from giving land grants and asked them instead to hand over all government land in their possession to the Ministry of Housing. The surprising thing is that the Nazaha announcement went unnoticed. Nobody stopped to give it a thought. This is because we have been immune to Nazaha's announcements, as if the commission had become an advertisement agency promoting a product called “corruption” through paid ads in the local media and newspapers. I am not exaggerating when I say we give more attention to the news about the death of a cat in the street than the news about corruption. If Nazaha's announcement about the discovery of corruption in a government department were published in any Western country, it would have made front-page headlines in all newspapers in that country for at least a week. Investigations would have been made and many heads would have rolled but this will not happen in the Kingdom because we have our own “specialty”. The news item coincided with another story about a Saudi family who had to beg for a living. The story spoke about the difficulties this family had to face in order to feed its children. This is also a redundant story that has been repeated many times in our newspapers. We have become used to reading such stories exactly as we have become used to the discoveries of corruption by Nazaha. However, the difference between the two stories is that we should stop at the second one and try to resolve the problem of the poor Saudi family. The first news item is a problem that should be resolved but the second one is a bigger problem that we should not skip easily. The nagging question is this: Is there any relationship between corruption and begging?
