Kuwait goes to the polls
Candidates in today’s Kuwaiti elections – the first with women participants - made a final pitch for voters to endorse electoral reform, the issue that caused the emir to dissolve parliament last month.
“Tomorrow is a crossroad, either the country is united against corruption or corruption prevails,” legislator Nasser al-Saneh, who is running for re-election, said yesterday.
On the eve of the voting, some candidates invited constituents to elaborate buffet dinners in air-conditioned tents and others hosted speakers. Women’s organisations took out adverts in newspapers to encourage females, who won their political rights last year, to go to the polls.
Women are the wild card of this election. They make 57% of voters, and even fundamentalist Muslims who opposed giving them the right to vote were inviting them to seminars and seeking their support.
Twenty-eight women are among the 252 candidates running in the election.
But besides the entry of women, the election has brought another twist in politics-as-usual in this small oil-rich emirate, where the government is dominated by the ruling family and the legislature has long broken down along Islamist, liberal and tribal lines.
The campaign has turned into an unprecedented national dialogue about political corruption that pitted reformist MPs against the government.
The debate was sparked by a dispute over redrawing the country’s 25 electoral precincts that prompted the emir, Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah, to dissolve the legislature in late May and call new elections.
The Cabinet had sought to cut the number of constituencies to 10, but a bloc of 29 MPs – backed by thousands of young men and women who demonstrated in the streets – wanted them reduced to five, saying that would make it almost impossible to buy votes.
They accused the government led by the Al Sabah family of procrastination and lack of seriousness about political reform.
Reformist MPs, including Muslim fundamentalists, stormed out of the house when the Cabinet introduced its 10-constituency proposal, egged on by Kuwaitis in the gallery, many of whom wore orange T-shirts and waved orange balloons.
Young demonstrators adopted the colour, which became synonymous with political reform.
All 50 seats of the parliament are up for grabs in today’s vote. There are more than 340,000 eligible voters.
