Small-time bribery & corruption

From Bahrain's Gulf Daily News, 18th August, comes this classic snippet of news.

Motorist jailed for bid to bribe inspector

MOTORIST has been jailed for a year for trying to bribe a vehicle inspector to declare his car fit for the road when it was not. The Indian man, aged 30, will be deported at the end of his sentence.

He denied the charge but was convicted by the Lower Criminal Court, where he was also found guilty of failing to transfer the ownership of the vehicle into his name.

The defendant was arrested at the General Directorate of Traffic vehicle inspection centre in May this year. He had taken his car in for another inspection after it was failed earlier because of several faults, the court heard. But he had not fixed the faults and instead tried to bribe the inspector with BD20 to clear it anyway.

The man, a cold store worker, told police that the inspector asked for BD20, which he thought was the inspection charge. He said he at first said he only had BD5, but when the inspector insisted, he gave him BD20.

But the inspector said the man followed him into his office and offered him money after he told him to come back when he had fixed the car. "He gave me BD5 and I did not reply to him," said the inspector. "Then he gave me BD10 and I told him BD20 and I would sign the paper. He put BD20 in my pocket and I immediately informed my superiors."

Hold on here, if a Vehicle Inspector asks for BD20 to sign the paper, isn't that asking for a bribe, ... surely there is an admission of guilt here by the Vehicle Inspector! If accurately reported, this is a good example of the way the legal system operates in Bahrain. Cynics might say that if the Vehicle Inspector was an ex-pat, and the motorist Bahraini, the outcome would be very different.

I guess this also shows how difficult it is to stamp out corruption when you have one person's word against another's.

Movie addict

Can a Kuwaiti reader help me understand what's with Ali Bebhehani? Is the Arab Times so desperate for Letters to the Editor that it prints everything Ali has to say about movies he’s watched? It's not even a review of movies... it's just ramblings about movies he's watched in the past. Given that the editor, Ahmed Jarallah seems to not be too afraid to print his or other musings on controversial topics, can’t he do better and print some of the other letters/emails he receives? Who’s paying who the favor here?

Talking movies, we’ve bought a stack of DVDs recently from Carrefour in Dubai and an ex-pat reducing their collection. I’m not usually one to see a film more than once, but buying is a lot more attractive these days with original DVDs (not the dubious copies easily available locally for KD2) more reasonable than going to a Kuwaiti cinema, with the added bonus that the film hasn’t been cut to pieces by the censor. For those unfamiliar with censorship in Kuwait, kissing & hugging or any outward indication of love is out, let alone sex scenes; whereas the more violence the better! Then there are some films like Fahrenheit 9/11 (offensive to Saudi royal family & our friends the American regime) or Passion of Christ that don’t have any sexual connotations but are banned altogether.

If you ever wanted to see what the rest of the world thinks of movies I just came across this article in the NZ Herald which provides links to all the websites out there that provide movie reviews.