Chan'ad Bahraini

Just want to clear up a couple of factual errors I made in previous posts.

Two days ago I claimed that Gulf Air's office in Nepal was attacked by angry mobs in response to the killing of Nepali workers in Iraq. This was no more than just a rumour, as today's GDN tells us that:

Rioters attacked Arab and Islamic targets, including a mosque and the Qatar Airways office in Kathmandu. But Gulf Air's office was well out of the way and was not attacked, an airline official said in Bahrain yesterday.

Also, last week I was celebrating the demise of the Information Ministry, as it had been reported in the GDN. However, a commenter at Mahmood's Den directed us to a report in the Akhbar Al Khaleej, the GDN's Arabic language sister paper, in which an official is denying the report. This was also reported in the Dubai based Khaleej Times on August 30th which had this to say:

MANAMA - Reports appeared in the section of local Press stating that the Ministry of Information will be abolished, are ‘baseless,’ a source close to the ministry has told Khaleej Times on the condition of anonymity.

The reports said that the ministry will be abolished and will be divided into three commissions tourism; radio and TV; and culture and heritage.

The source said that the officials at the ministry were unaware of such development and were taken aback, pointing out that a local Arabic daily even carried a report later apologising for the inconvenience caused by the news and that it was not true. He said the ministry plays an important role, and it is not true that any such developments were being considered.

There is definitely something very fishy about this whole thing. If the original report was entirely baseless, why would the "source" telling this to the Khaleej Times have to speak on the condition of anonymity? Surely, everyone would come out and publicly say that there is no truth to the story. The other curious thing is that the GDN has remained completely silent on this since its initial report. There's definitely some infighting or something of the sort going on... ahh, I love Bahraini politics. If anyone has some more insider info about the story, then please do leave a comment.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 03, 2004 at 9/03/2004 06:17:00 pm. Permalink