Kuwaitis began heading to polling booths yesterday with little hope that their third election since 2006 will end a tussle between parliament and the government that has held up key economic reforms.
The new assembly will have to vote on a US$5 billion economic stimulus package seen as crucial to helping the financial sector of the Gulf Arab country overcome the global financial crisis.
The measures were approved by the caretaker Cabinet — which is dominated by members of the ruling family — and by ruler Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah in March after the last assembly was dissolved, but must also be approved by the new assembly.
There are no political parties in Kuwait, the world’s fourth largest oil exporter, but conservative Islamists and tribal figures who have opposed government economic plans and pressed ministers over accountability are expected to dominate again.
“Islamists can lose some seats but it won’t be enough to change the general mood in the parliament,” political analyst Shafiq al-Ghabra said.
Although its political system resembles Western democracy more closely than that of any other nation in the conservative Gulf Arab region, Kuwait has fallen behind its neighbors economically.
Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have all transformed themselves from desert backwaters into commercial, financial and tourist centers that attract foreign investors. By contrast, parliament has blocked many of Kuwait’s major projects and the state was forced to rescue a major bank last year.
Deputies accuse the government of corruption and oppose trimming back the huge welfare state. They have insisted on using their rights to demand ministers appear before parliament for public scrutiny.
The government, dominated by the ruling Al Sabah family, has balked at putting forward ministers to be questioned.
Kuwait’s protracted crisis led Moody’s Investors Service to say in March it may cut the country’s sovereign rating for the first time since it started rating Kuwait in 1996.
The government resigned in March to avoid Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser al-Mohammad al-Sabah, a nephew of the ruler, having to appear before the parliamentarians for questioning.
This prompted the ruler to dissolve parliament and call new elections in an effort to end the stalemate, as Kuwait’s rulers have done repeatedly during the 45-year history of the elected assembly.
Kuwaiti politics both repels and inspires fellow Gulf Arabs.
In no other Gulf state is the ruling dynasty’s power as diluted through popular participation in politics as it is in Kuwait. Other Gulf rulers looks askance at the experiment while some ordinary voters see the rowdy parliament as a bad example.
Kuwaiti women, who have never won a parliamentary seat, hoped voters fed up with repeated political crises will give female candidates a chance to prove themselves in yesterday’s poll.
Three women have been appointed ministers since Kuwait passed a 2005 law granting women the right to vote and run for office for the first time since parliament was created in 1963.
“This is our time. The right to vote was taken away from us for 40 years and until today we didn’t get all our rights,” Sara Akbar, chief executive of oil firm Kuwait Energy Co, told a women-only rally supporting female candidate Rola Dashti.
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