The Peninsula Newspaper
Wednesday, 15 February 2012
The Kuwaiti democratic process is going through a new phase, in which the opposition swept the elections to the National Assembly. Despite the frequency, high tone, personal attacks by some of the candidates, burning of the tent of one of the candidates before the election, who used insulting language to criticize another candidate and the attempted attack on a candidate because of a television interview, all these problems vanished on the polling day and no incident of violence and attacks was recorded. It is what distinguishes Kuwaiti experience and its stability and separates it from other Arab countries that have not been stabilized even after the departure of authoritarian regimes.
(1) The Kuwaiti legislative elections 2012 were characterized by the presence of a large number of candidates which reached the 398, including 28 women, in five constituencies, in which the number of voters reached about 400,000 voters, more than half of them women. The elections also characterized, for the first time since the start of the democratic process with the Constitution of 1962 with the participation of local and international observers from regional and international bodies to control the conduct of the elections in all its stages to cover the administrative aspects and ensure the impartiality of the members of the committees and the security apparatus as well as monitor the performance of the candidates, media and voters. The landslide victory has been achieved by Sunni Islamists opponents including Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist movement which have 23 seats compared to nine seats in the outgoing parliament. In alliance with other movements and with 34 seats in parliament, compared to twenty in the previous parliament, the opposition is in a position to control entirely on the decision of the council, as they are able to overcome the impact to vote the non-elected 15 ministers in general, who enjoy under the constitution the right to vote in the National Assembly and they are like the representatives of the house. The candidates from tribal people, especially in the fourth and fifth constituencies, also proved that they are the biggest force in the opposition and the Islamic movement. The Liberals, who were considered as the opposition and took a different line during the campaign, won only two seats in the new parliament after they were in control of five seats. The Shiites, who make up a third of citizens in Kuwait according to unofficial estimates, saw their share in Parliament declining from nine to seven parliamentarians including five Shiite Islamic parliamentarians. Any female candidate didn’t succeed in the merit after recording a historic women’s entry to the National Assembly with four representatives during the last elections in 2009. The women representatives paid the price for their loyalty to of the government. All these different and diverse scenes come in the wake of the unprecedented popular youth movement that Kuwait witnessed and overthrew the government of former president and its loyalists.
(2) More than one index revealed the results of the Kuwaiti elections as Khaled Suleiman says that the opposition’s victory of a majority of seats in the council confirms its weight in the Kuwaiti street and its focus on a large segment of society refutes the theory of the silent majority, which was propagated for its scaling before the dissolution of the previous council. He said that the victory of tribal candidates in tribal constituencies without contesting in sub-elections confirms that the Kuwaiti voter came out of the mantle of the tribe. It is an indicator of political awareness which accomplished by the experience in addition to changing the political climate. The reason for the failure of women’s access to the National Assembly reflects the disappointment from the experience of her performance in the previous council, and probably they were abandoned by some of the forces that supported their arrival last time. Some observers also expect that the age of the new council will be short pursuant to the disappointing results for the government. The government will not tolerate the opposition’s control over the majority which will be able to pass its interrogations. It is important for the political system to assess the election results properly. The coexistence with the results is the coexistence with the reality that has begun to represent the political scene in Kuwait and reflect the fact of trends in public opinion which must be taken into account at this time. Some believe that the new parliament is the (Board of Fives), in which 5 seats have been won by Salafists, 5 by the popular bloc, 5 by Ajman, 5 by Awazem, 5 by Mateer, 5 by Rashaida and 5 by the national forces and they will not stay for more than 5 months before their dissolution! Dr. Ghanem Al-Najjar in his remark on that pointed out that the argument that the next council will not stay for more than a few months could be contained. There is a battle which is still raging between some of the members of the family from outside the government, and its topic, the failure of the next government along with the Parliament and coating it for the “opposition” especially is a confusion in concepts and intention with the opposition is not clear and it also does not have the declared program. We may soon see who was known for his loyalty previously and has turned suddenly to an opponent while we have opposition members, but the opposition cannot be described by the picture which is used to circulate the ambiguous term. The former oil minister Adel Al-Sabeeh in his remark on the election mentioned that the repeated political crisis is arising from the failure of power, i.e., the ruling family and the government failed to fill the political vacuum in the country. He noted that all the political strings end in the hand of Kuwait’s ruling family. In any case, the big win for the opposition and acquiring the ability to resolve the vote in the National Assembly do not result in ending the political crisis.
(3) The important results in the Kuwaiti parliamentary elections could be used by the Gulf States that will see the legislative elections, such as Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE. These results represent the report of the Kuwait Transparency Society, which recommended a range of legislations and policies to manage the electoral process in order to develop and improve it. The most important of them is to review the system of constituencies in order to achieve greater fairness and review the system of nomination of individual to enhance the role of political and economic program rather than social relations. There is a need to issue a law to create a public body for the promotion of democracy concerned with the management of the general elections and control of electoral expenditure, advertising, community’s involvement, dissemination of culture and promotion of good citizenship. The government should work to pass a law on political associations, which organizes their work according to the rules and regulations for the establishment of the society. There is a need to organize the process in both the public and private sectors. The government should also work to change the legislation on the phenomenon of vote buying and laws to protect the whistleblowers and determine a financial reward to those who reveal the crime.
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