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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Kuwait
Index
City of Kuwait, capital of Kuwait
Courtesy Embassy of Kuwait, Washington
One of the most remarkable aspects of Kuwaiti politics
in the
postindependence period is the National Assembly--one of
the few
elected legislative bodies in the region. Preinvasion
Kuwait was
one of the most politically open states in the region and
the
most open in the gulf. It had a relatively free press and
an
assembly elected by a small electorate of adult male
citizens.
The authors of the postindependence constitution of 1962,
aware
of the precedent set in the 1938 Legislative Assembly, saw
the
creation of an elected legislative body as an important
means to
widen the popular consensus and thereby further legitimize
the
rule of the Al Sabah, especially at a time when the
family's
position was threatened by the Iraqi claim to the entire
territory of the new state. After the January 1963
election of
the first National Assembly, the body evolved to serve as
a broad
forum for discussion and dissent. The men who dominated
this
assembly, however, were not the historical elite but, with
some
exceptions, were Kuwaitis who benefited from the state's
generous
welfare system. The historical opposition, the merchants
on whom
the amir relied for money in the lean pre-oil years,
refrained
from politics, devoting themselves instead to investing
the money
the amir sent their way.
Although the constitution affords the assembly
considerable
power, the body is limited by two major restrictions: the
small
size of the electorate as defined by law, which restricts
suffrage to most adult male nationals whose ancestors were
present in Kuwait in 1920; and the power of the amir to
dissolve
the assembly virtually at will. Nonetheless, the assembly
plays a
prominent role in raising issues of public importance,
reviewing
and challenging government policies and programs, and
responding
to constituent concerns. It helps give Kuwait a much more
open
and public political life than that in other gulf states.
The roots of the National Assembly began in the 1961
elections for the Constituent Assembly, which drafted a
constitution and laid the groundwork for elections in 1963
to the
first National Assembly. The 1963 elections produced a
solid
opposition in the National Bloc, which challenged
government
policy in a number of areas. The opposition was so
volatile that
when elections were next held in 1967, opponents charged
the
government with widespread election fraud in an effort to
restrict the contentious body. The new assembly indeed
proved
more pliable. However, the 1971 elections returned a more
confrontational assembly, one that devoted much of its
energies
to the nationalization of the oil company. Elections for
the
fourth assembly took place in 1975 and produced a body
more
strongly opposed to the government than its predecessor.
In
August 1976, Sabah as Salim dissolved the assembly and
introduced
new restrictions on public assembly and speech. But in
1980,
because of renewed concern for popular support in light of
the
Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the regional tension that
accompanied the subsequent Iran-Iraq War, the new amir,
Shaykh
Jabir al Ahmad, allowed elections to be held. The fifth
assembly
was highly confrontational, as was the sixth, elected in
1985.
When in 1986 the assembly began attacking members of the
ruling
family, primarily in connection with the handling of the
1982 Suq
al Manakh stock market crash, the amir again suspended the
assembly. The minister of justice, a member of the ruling
family,
was forced to resign because of allegations he had used
public
influence for personal gain in resolving the crash. As in
1976,
external pressures from Saudi Arabia, which was highly
critical
of Kuwait's more participatory system, probably played a
role in
the amir's decision.
Opposition to the decision again to suspend the
assembly
manifested itself in the Constitutional Movement of
1989-90. In
1989 members of the dissolved assembly began organizing
and
calling for reinstitution of the assembly and articles of
the
1962 constitution that the amir had suspended as well in
1986.
They were joined by many merchants, previously politically
quiescent--but now alienated by the ruler's inability to
provide
the level of economic support they had come to expect
owing to
the fall in oil prices--and by such others as
professionals,
liberals, and Islamists. The movement quickly spread
through the
diwaniyat (sing., diwaniyah), private weekly
social
meetings in the homes of prominent families, until it
became a
series of popular antigovernment demonstrations. As the
movement
developed, the amir and the crown prince responded with
both
carrots and sticks. In an effort to divide the opposition,
the
government announced in 1990 that although it would not
restore
the National Assembly it would establish a National
Council
comprising fifty elected members and twenty-five appointed
members. The new body would thus be less representative
than the
old assembly. It would also have less power: for example,
it
could not enact legislation directly. The opposition
opposed such
an extra-constitutional council, viewing it not only as an
effort
to preclude a genuinely representative assembly but also
as a way
for the government to prepare loyalist candidates in the
event
that genuine assembly elections were held. (Indeed, when
National
Assembly elections were eventually scheduled in the
postinvasion
period, a large number of National Council members
announced they
would run.) Although opposition leaders and others
boycotted the
elections, the new body was nonetheless constituted
following
elections for the nonappointed seats in June 1990. This
new body
had just begun meeting when the Iraqi invasion rendered it
obsolete. The National Council met again on several
occasions
after the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991 but was
eliminated
when the National Assembly was reconstituted by elections
in
October 1992.
Elections for the National Assembly were held on
October 5,
1992, by amiri decree, in accordance with the 1962
constitution.
Seven political groups (parties remained banned) backed
candidates in the campaign. The groups included the
Islamic
Constitutional Movement, the Islamic Parliamentarian
Alliance,
the Islamic National Alliance (a Shia group), and the
Democratic
Forum (progressive former Arab nationalists). The election
proceeded without major incident. Opposition and
independent
candidates, including many associated with the
prodemocracy
movement, won the majority, thirty to thirty-five of the
assembly's fifty seats. Progovernment candidates won the
remaining fifteen to twenty seats, primarily in tribal
constituencies. Islamist candidates won nineteen seats, a
dramatic increase over the nine they had held in the
former
assembly. Seventeen of the elected members had served in
previous
assemblies.
Among the issues the members promised to raise in the
new
assembly were public spending and related financial
concerns,
foreign policy and the events leading up to the Iraqi
invasion,
the political status of women (many of whom demonstrated
for
suffrage during the elections), and Islamic law. Following
the
elections, Prime Minister and Crown Prince Saad al Abd
Allah
announced the formation on October 17 of the new cabinet.
The
cabinet included fewer members of the ruling family than
had
previous cabinets and six National Assembly opposition
members
among the sixteen ministers. The new cabinet, however,
still left
family members holding key posts, including that of
minister of
foreign affairs, which was returned to the long-serving
but
unpopular Sabah al Ahmad Al Sabah.
Data as of January 1993
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