Bahrain Mirror (Exclusive): In 2008, the six Gulf monarchies began to plan for a low Value Added Tax (VAT) rate, but despite the recommendations of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to move forward with this project, in late 2011, the plans were delayed, notes Christopher M. Davidson in his book After the Sheikhs: The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies.

The value added tax came in 2017 as an inevitable result of the collapse policy that Davidson mentioned in his well-known book.

The "added value" term is derived from the way additions are made to the commodities. At each stage of the production of any commodity, a value is added to the price, raising the price until it reaches the consumer. The consumer will then bear the cost of all the added values on the commodity throughout its production process.

In the poorest of the Gulf kingdoms, all added values (not just tax) are collected by the government to partially offset its accumulating deficit. It does not pay the citizens the value of what they endure, but rather gives them no value at all.

In the poorest of the Gulf kingdoms, the citizens are deemed an addition to the state, in the sense that they are considered a burden on its shoulders, and have no value to it. The government constantly attempts to get rid of its citizens. That's how it sees them. When it gives them some of their entitlements, it is considered a type of spending worthy of recovering and getting compensation for, if the citizens show anything that would disturb its policy in the management of commodities whose added values the citizen bear.

Commodity management is considered a political practice, because it is a common matter through which people's interests, benefits and conflicts intersect. Like any public affair, it should be open to the public for deliberation. However, in the poorest Gulf states, no one is allowed to open their mouth. Even the legislative authority does not have the free will to manage the market goods policy from which citizens benefit.

The roundup of the past seven years since 2011 is similar to the value-added policy, adding the cost of each year to the account of the citizen who has no voice, no free will and no public space. This year, the citizen received the total added value of the past seven years, a high bill exceeding 5%, and even exceeding the cost of goods to a more dangerous level. The citizen pays the cost of citizenship in its core fields: education, development and health.

The added value comes as a result of the failures of the authorities in governance and their corruption due to the policy of repression, political isolation and monopoly of power, not as a result of allowing entitlement to political participation and democracy, and opening of public space.

O citizen, you live in a state without sovereignty that wants you to give up your sovereignty. There is no money in its treasury but it wants you to pay from your own pocket for it. There is no democracy in its politics but it wants you to elect its quasi-men. There is no oil in its land but it wants you to trust in its barren rocks. You are in a hell they call a homeland.

Arabic Version