Bahrain Mirror (Exclusive): The term money laundering is said to have originated from the mafia's ownership of laundromats to conceal the source of the money obtained as a result of illicit activities such as drug trafficking, where they equipped laundromats with coin-operated washing machines, and at the end of each day they added some of the drug revenues to the revenues of laundry shops.

In politics, what King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa is doing is a process similar to concealing the source of the crime, as the desired outcome of every election he calls for is laundering his laws and resolutions.

The Bahraini king and the ruling family have failed many tests to accept differing opinions, and have shown that the continued superiority of the ruling family, its acquisition of wealth and dominance over decision-making is what drives him politically and on the security level, so why does the king insist on what he calls "our democratic institutions"?

The king insists on the continuation of his so-called democratic institutions in order to launder the decrees, meaning that he wants automatic coin-operated washing machines (the Shura Council and the House of Representatives) to launder the decrees and  laws issued by him so that they could appear to be popular and democratic.  

A member of the House of Representatives is paid about a quarter a million dinars in four years, and so is every member of the Shura Council. They are paid for playing the role of whitewasher of the awful laws issued by the payer.

The decrees issued by the King usually carry security, economic and political measures that go against the interests and aspirations of the people, therefore, he refers them to his legislative authority to pass them in a democratic way that would only suit him.

This is not the King's only aim, as he wants the public to get preoccupied with criticizing his legislative authority for being responsible for passing those decrees under which the people's sons are executed, arrested, deprived of their rights and taxed. 

The man hides behind 80 people to say he is not responsible for passing terrorism laws, lifting subsidies on basic goods, electricity and gasoline, raising the public debt ceiling, approving and doubling the value-added tax, raising the retirement age and stopping the annual increase of retirees.

He wants us to believe that he is innocent of issuing all these and other resolutions that he refers by decree-laws to the Council, and wants to convince us that the first and last one responsible for those decisions is MP Mohammad Al-Sisi and other MPs like him.

All the major legislations in the country are issued by the King, including legislation concerning the work of the House of Representatives and its internal regulations, hence it is part of the ruling family and has nothing to do with the democratic process in which people participate.

The ruling family went too far in this process to the extent of choosing the lists of voters and who is eligible to run for the Council's membership, leading up to the selection of the final formation in a process full of fraud. It's as if the ruling family wants to say, "We too have the right to choose your sham representatives."

For these and other reasons, opposition formations and even political societies close to the government believe that these elections will witness the lowest voter turnout of the legislative chapters the country has seen, since there is no popular need for a council whose main task is to launder the king's decrees.

Arabic Version