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.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS