AFP/Kuwait City
Kuwaitis voted for change in the Gulf emirate’s second poll in a year, giving women their first seats in parliament and punishing Sunni Islamic groups, according to results released yesterday.
Frustrated at political turmoil that has rocked the wealthy Opec member over the past three years, Kuwaitis voted 21 new faces into the 50-member parliament, reducing Sunni Muslim groups to a minority.
There was no immediate official figure on Saturday’s election turnout, but the state-run Kuna news agency estimated it at 58 %, down from last year’s 65%.
Four women candidates made history by winning the first female seats in the Kuwaiti parliament, with one of them coming on top of the 10 winners from her district.
Liberals Massuma al-Mubarak, Aseel al-Awadhi and Rula Dashti, besides independent Salwa al-Jassar won seats in the new house. All are US-educated and hold doctorate degrees in political science, economics and education.
Kuwaiti leaders hailed the achievement as a deserved win.
In a cable of congratulations to the four women, Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah said he was “very delighted at the great results achieved by Kuwaiti women and their deserved success in the elections.”
His crown prince also sent a similar cable.
Sixteen women were among 210 candidates who stood in the election, the third since 2006.
“This is the will of change of the Kuwaiti people,” MP Mubarak said. “We hope the results will lead to political stability and help achieve the desired co-operation between parliament and government.”
The two mainstream Sunni groups, the Islamic Salafi Alliance and the Islamic Constitutional Movement, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, were dealt a heavy blow, winning just three seats versus seven they held in the previous parliament.
Their tribal Islamist supporters were also reduced from 14 to just eight seats. Liberals and their allies improved their tally by one seat to eight.
The Shia Muslim minority emerged big winners, almost doubling their strength from five seats to as many as nine. Five of them are Islamist Shias.
The nationalist Popular Action Bloc led by veteran opposition figure Ahmed al-Saadun took three seats, down one.
Major tribes, which account for half of the population, won 25 seats, a few of them pro-Islamists.
In the light of the results, political analyst Nasser al-Abdali believes the composition of the next government will be decisive in shaping relations with the new parliament.
Under law, a new cabinet must be named before elected MPs hold their first formal session after two weeks.
“If the composition of the new government does not change fundamentally, crises will return in a big way,” said Abdali, head of the Kuwait Society for Development of Democracy.
He said that almost all members in the outgoing parliament whom the government blamed for causing crises have been re-elected which “sets the stage for more confrontations.”
Three out of five Islamist lawmakers who filed three requests to question the prime minister, the moves which triggered the dissolution of parliament, have retained their seats, while one lost and the fifth did not stand.
Moreover, two candidates who were detained for criticising the ruling family and threatening to resist the security forces have also been elected.
The early elections were called after the emir dissolved parliament in March for the second time in a year amid a standoff between MPs and the government.
The new parliament faces an immediate hurdle in that it will be asked to give retrospective approval to a multi-billion-dollar economic stimulus package already implemented by the government.
Many newly elected MPs have vowed during their campaigns to oppose the bill, which outspoken opposition MP Mussallam al-Barrak described as a bailout for “investment whales”.
Kuwait says it sits on 10% of global oil reserves and pumps around 2.2mn barrels per day. It has a native population of 1.1mn and some 2.35mn foreign residents.
The women who made history
Massuma al-Mubarak: The US-educated university professor made history by becoming Kuwait’s first woman minister in 2005. Mubarak spent a year as planning minister before being appointed transport minister in 2006 and health minister a year later. She stepped down in 2007, bowing to pressure over her handling of a hospital fire.
Rula Dashti: The US-educated economist is a leading women’s rights activist and advocate of democratic and economic reforms. Dashti was the first woman elected to chair the Kuwaiti Economic Society. She was listed among the 20 most prominent Arab women by the Financial Times last year. Dashti is also a member of Kuwait’s supreme planning council.
Aseel al-Awadhi: Born in 1969, US-educated Awadhi is a professor of philosophy at Kuwait University.
Salwa al-Jassar: A professor of education at Kuwait University, US-educated Jassar is also a leading women’s rights activist and chair of the non-governmental Women’s Empowerment Centre.
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