Abdulghaphor Hajjieh

Abdulghaphor Hajjieh
عبدالغفور حاجيه
Born	(1988-03-15) 15 March 1988 Salmiya, Kuwait
Nationality	Kuwaiti
Education	Kuwait University (BSc) University of Kansas (MA)
Occupation(s)	Economist, Politician
Political party	Kuwait Democratic Forum (2008–present)

Abdulghaphor Hajjieh (Arabic: عبدالغفور حاجيه, born 15 March 1988) is an economist and politician from Kuwait, who served as a board member for the Democratic Forum and the Youth Association of Kuwait.

Hajjieh attended Khalid Saud Al Zaid High School, a public high school in Qurain, studied economics at Kuwait University and the University of Kansas, and later joined Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research as an economist and Al Anba Newspaper as a business columnist. He previously worked for the International Monetary Fund, Al Safat Investment Company, and Al Qabas Newspaper.

He became involved with the Democratic Forum in 2008 through its affiliate student organization, the Democratic Circle Ticket, and an affiliated youth organization the Youth Association of Kuwait, becoming a Treasurer of the former and Vice President of the latter. He's considered part of the centre-left faction of the Forum, advocating for gradual political and economic reform through elections and joining the Al Sabah Cabinet.

Early life and education

Hajjieh was born on March 15, 1988, in Salmiya, the third child of Mohammed Hajjieh Asirri (Arabic: محمد حاجيه أسيري). He attended Khaled Saud Al Zaid High School (Arabic: ثانوية خالد سعود الزيد), where he majored in science. At High School, he volunteered for the Democratic Circle Ticket which ran for student council.

Kuwait University

He was accepted to Kuwait University, where he studied Economics. He explains that his acceptance was based on a Public Authority for Applied Education and Training certificate, not his high school diploma, restricting his application to business school, adding that economics was the closest thing to Political Science and that he likes how it draws from other disciplines and the abstract nature of it.

At KU, he joined the Dean's List Council (Arabic: اللجنة الاستشارية للطلبة المتفوقين), a prestigious student organization that represents the interests of honor students, and was later elected as its vice president and eventually its president. As President of that organization, he voted on rewriting its bylaws to include direct student academic assistance through one-on-one tutoring and pushed for rebranding the organization and adopting the acronym DLCCBA.

He also joined the Democratic Circle (Arabic: قائمة الوسط الديمقراطي), a left-leaning student organization that supports a ticket that runs for the board of the National Union for Kuwaiti Students (Arabic: الاتحاد الوطني لطلبة الكويت), and became its treasurer. During his tenure as treasurer, he tapped into a network of former members and organizations such as Kuwait Democratic Forum, National Democratic Alliance, and Youth Association of Kuwait to help fund it.

Furthermore, with a group of colleagues, he started KU's first online, streaming through SoundCloud and later YouTube, named the Voice of CBA (Arabic: إذاعة صوت الإدارية) that had two recurring shows, one commenting on current student affairs and another interviewing student activists about their interests. However, after one month he was instructed to shut it down due to complaints of bias.

During his time at Kuwait University, he worked at Al Qabas Newspaper and Al Taleea Newspaper as a journalist, and before graduation, he was chosen to intern at the United States Department of State. He graduated summa cum laude.

University of Kansas

Through a scholarship from Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, he is currently doing a graduate degree in economics at the University of Kansas, where he was chosen to lead the Economics Graduate Student Organization and was elected to the university's Student Senate on a platform to make the GRE optional across all graduate program applications.

He also supports Al Wihda (Arabic: قائمة الوحدة الطلابية), a liberal student organization that runs for the National Union of Kuwaiti Students's USA branch seats, writing in Al Anba newspaper that it's a principled organization that believes in democracy, liberty, equality and justice, furthermore explaining that any Kuwaiti student in the United States that's against sectarianism and tribalism should support it.

Career

Hajjieh started his career at the International Monetary Fund after graduating from Kuwait University, working as a Research Assistant and Course Administrator at their regional office in Kuwait, the IMF's Center for Economics and Finance, gaining extensive knowledge on how international organizations operate and communicate with governments, learning diplomatic language and protocol on the hands of various senior IMF officials, and interacting on a regular basis with senior Arab government officials when organizing economic training courses on monetary policy, fiscal policy, energy policy, financial programming, and other topics.

He also helped organize a symposium that hosted celebrated American journalist Thomas Friedman, and other economic crash courses for newly elected parliamentarians and newly appointed senior officials in the middle east.

Hajjieh moved to the private sector to work as an Investor Relations Manager at Safat Investment Company, a mid-size investment conglomerate. He also spearheaded different projects one of which yielded a Guinness World Record.

After a short stint in the private sector, he was recruited to join Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, working on policy papers and empirical economic research on trade, investment, and economic policy, in addition to writing a business column at Al Anba Newspaper.

Community Participation and Activism

Abdulghaphor Hajjieh joined multiple liberal and left-leaning organizations in Kuwait in addition to Kuwait Graduate Society and Kuwait Economic Society.

Kuwait Democratic Forum

Abdulghaphor was recruited by Ali Hussain Al-Awadhi to join the Democratic Forum after representing the Youth Association of Kuwait in multiple events. In 2019, he was elected as a board member for the Forum and was later re-elected to the board and promoted to board secretary in 2020 where he served until 2022.

He was a fixture of the Forum's electoral campaigns, working for Mohammed Al-Abduljader's in 2008, Abdullah Al-Naibari in 2009, Mohammed Al-Abduljader in 2012 and 2013.

Youth Association of Kuwait

Hajjieh joined the National Democratic Youth Association in 2007, which later became the Youth Association of Kuwait in 2010, an affiliate of the Democratic Forum. He represented the Association at Kuwait Civil Alliance in 2014, and helped issue a Universal Periodic Review document that was discussed at the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Also, in 2014 he spearheaded a campaign that successfully lobbied the Kuwaiti Ministry of Youth Affairs and the Ministry of Social Works to issue a regulatory framework that gives volunteer organizations legal status. In 2015, the Association was granted legal status under Kuwaiti law and he was elected as treasurer of the newly formed legal entity. In 2017 he was elected to Vice President of the Youth Association of Kuwait, however he quit soon after to pursue a political career in the Democratic Forum of Kuwait.

National Youth Project

Abdulghaphor was requested by a senior government official in 2019 to participate in the Amiri Diwan's National Youth Project as quasi-representative of young leftists, where he participated in discussions that culminated in issuing the Youth Policy Manual. He also participated in the Diwan's Kuwait Nudgeathon competition of which he won.

Views

As an economist, Hajjieh writes generally about topics ranging from technology to public policy in various publications, mainly Al Qabas and Al Anbaa Newspapers.

Social Division Based on Technology

Abdulghaphor views automation as an inevitable outcome of technological progress, analyzing that the steady rise of unemployment in the middle east is partly caused by the modernization of both the private and public sectors. He adds that governments across the middle east should rethink their education policies to include transferrable skills that can adjust to the increasing deindustrialization of multiple sectors. He professes that the world is going to split not between core states and peripheral states but between countries that invest heavily in science and technology and those that don't.

Collectibles are Alternative Investment

He sees the emergence of online marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon contributed to the popularity of collectibles as investments, indicating that there is a trend of middle-class households starting to buy Lego sets, Funko Pop!, Baseball Cards, and other collectibles, whereas investment outfits have developed technologies to turn these collectibles into financial instruments.

Kuwaitization is a Method of Wealth Distribution

Hajjieh claims that a historical trend of Kuwaitization of administrative and clerical work as means of wealth distribution didn't start with the discovery of oil by Anglo-Persian Oil Company in 1934, but rather later as a reaction to calls for political reform by nationalist and Pan-Arab political groups.

Price Controls Distorts Markets

In Al Khaleej News, Abdulghaphor says that price controls distort the goods market and will eventually lead to either a surplus if prices were set too high or a deficit if prices were too low, adding that there are alternative policies that are less intrusive such as agricultural investment through Kuwait's sovereign wealth fund in other countries and exporting them back with favorable prices.

Creation of Chief Economist as a Cabinet Post

On Good Morning Kuwait, Abdulghaphor proposed the creation of a cabinet-level Chief Economist post that serves as head of a Council of Economic Advisors, adding that one of main reasons the government needs that post is to steer economic expectations related to inflation, unemployment, and growth, in addition to providing evidence-based policy initiatives.

Earlier, Hajjieh proposed a similar idea on Al Qabas Newspaper on the establishment of the Office of the Minister of Economic Affairs, a post that was created in 2020.