Kuwaiti voters headed to the polls today for the third time in three years to elect a new parliament amid an economic downturn that has spurred some to reconsider the Persian Gulf kingdom's experiment in democracy.
Kuwait's ruling emir dissolved parliament earlier this year, accusing it of unnecessarily blocking a series of reforms that he said would make the economy more efficient, and for going after members of the royal family for alleged corruption.
A crucial civil rights battle was won in Kuwait when women were allowed to run for office and vote in 2005. But apparently much still needs to be done for women seeking a political role in this oil-rich emirate to prevail over religious conservatives.
On Monday, the Salafi movement, which believes in a strict fundamental interpretation of Islam, called for the boycott of female candidates in parliamentary elections scheduled for later this month, reported the website of the Arab TV channel Al Arabiya.
The group’s statements were condemned by civil rights groups in the Persian Gulf nation, which boasts one of the most democratic systems among neighboring kingdoms.
Fuhaid Hailam, a Salafi politician, told the channel that voting for women was a “sin” in Islam. He based his judgment on a saying by the prophet Muhammad, who reportedly asserted that a nation will not prosper if it is led by women.
Although women have been granted full rights to take part in Kuwait’s general elections, as long as they adhere to Islamic law, their participation in political life is still very modest. According to a report by Freedom House released last year, 27 women ran as candidates in the 2006 and 2008 parliamentary elections. But none of the female candidates have won a seat in the country’s National Assembly so far.
The international pro-democracy group also noted that only 35% of Kuwaiti women voted in the 2008 elections. In a response to the conservative stance of the Salafi movement, parliamentary candidate Fatima Abdeli, an advocate for women rights who ran in the two previous elections, told Al Arabiya:
"Kuwaiti laws that gave women the right to run for parliament are not against Islamic laws.… This fatwa will harm women candidates and the Kuwaiti people might be deceived by it. We are not going to stand still while this happens. Women should not be told what to do."
Some observers believe that women might have better chances in this year’s elections.
-- Raed Rafei in Beirut
Photo: Masouma Mubarak, a parliamentary candidate and Kuwait's first female minister, enters the registrar department in Kuwait City in April to apply for official documents to run in upcoming elections. Credit: Stephanie McGehee / Reuters
Kuwaiti authorities released two political dissidents after holding them for several days for criticizing the ruling family in public, according to media reports. The two, former member of parliament Daifallah Buramia and municipal council member Khalifa al Kharafi, were running as candidates in the upcoming parliamentary elections.
The arrests reflect the crisis in democracy that Kuwait is facing these days. This small, oil-rich nation is often hailed for having an elected parliament, a rarity among autocratic Persian Gulf kingdoms. But tolerance toward political dissidents apparently has limits, especially when the ruling family is attacked.
On Sunday, Kharafi was arrested by state security. Local media reported that Kharafi was being questioned for saying that the Sabah family was incapable of running the country. Nevertheless, Kharafi was then allowed from behind prison bars to sign up as a candidate in the new elections scheduled for May.
Buramia, who was a member in the previous Islamist parliamentary bloc, was also arrested last week for reportedly saying during an election rally recently that Defense Minister Sheik Jabar al Hamad al Sabah, a close relative of the nation’s ruler, was “not fit” to become prime minister.
The arrests may be a sign that the Kuwaiti ruling family is toughening its stance against political opponents at the height of electoral campaigning.
Democracy in Kuwait often suffers from bickering between the legislative powers and the Cabinet, which is partly a reflection of persisting feudal mentalities. In March, for the second time in less than a year -- and after yet another political crisis in the country -- Kuwait’s emir, Sheik Sabah al Ahmed al Jabar al Sabah, who holds wide powers, disbanded the parliament and called for anticipated elections next month.
The standoff between Islamist legislators and members of the Sabah clan who usually dominate Kuwaiti cabinets is expected to persist after the elections on May 16.
Many fear that ongoing political tensions will hinder the implementation of economic reforms in the country, which has been hit by the international financial crunch and falling oil prices.
-- Raed Rafei in Beirut
Photo: Kuwaiti former Islamist opposition lawmaker Daifallah Buramia, center, speaks to the media as security forces arrive to arrest him in Kuwait City last week. Buramia was released today, according to media reports. Credit: Yasser al Zayyat / AFP
The small emirate of Kuwait witnessed a blow to its struggling democracy when the ruler of the oil-rich nation decided to disband the parliament on Wednesday, proving that the implementation of a Western-style democracy in a Persian Gulf region dominated by feudal mentalities remains a challenge.
The decision to dissolve the legislature for the second time in less than a year and call for early elections in two months was the result of an ongoing political crisis between the legislative powers and the Cabinet, at a time when the nation is facing the woes of the economic crisis and falling oil prices.
"The persistence of deference and disputes in the parliamentary life [exposes] national unity and the higher interests of the country to grave risks,” Sheik Sabah al Ahmed al Jabbar al Sabah, Kuwait’s ruler, said in an address to the nation, according to the official news agency, KUNA.
Iranian media quoted Air Force chief Brig. Gen. Ahmad Mighani as telling reporters that the Islamic Republic has set up a new military branch devoted exclusively to air defenses that will be in charge of guarding Iran's nuclear sites from potential Israeli or U.S. air attacks.
The branch, called the Name of the Holy Prophet Command, will draw together all the antiaircraft systems, surveillance gear, radar and missiles from the country's regular military branch as well as the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps under one umbrella with a mandate "to enhance and expand combat capabilities of the country's air defense unit," said Mighani, according to a report published on the website of Iran's English-language Press TV news channel.
"To counter the enemy's advanced military equipment, we should be equipped with state-of-the-art air defense technology," Mighani said.
Arab divisions, which have hardened since the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip, resurfaced at the Kuwait summit.
Arab governments failed today to develop a common position over the situation in Gaza, but hopes for reconciliation arose after King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia criticized Arab divisions and called for unity. “We have transcended the phase of differences and opened the door for Arab fraternity and unity to every Arab.”
Shortly after, Egyptian, Saudi, Qatari and Syrian leaders sat for lunch together, which some media celebrated as a sign of a possible rapprochement between the U.S. allies who refuse to throw their full support behind Hamas, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia on one hand, and Iranian allies in the region, namely Syria, on the other.
He first slammed Arab governments for standing idly by while Israel continued to kill Palestinians in Gaza.
Then Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asserted that the Islamic republic was the nation spearheading “political pressure” to stop the Jewish state’s war on Palestinians and those who support it.
Ahmadinejad, who spoke in an interview with Hezbollah’s TV channel, Al-Manar, on Wednesday evening, claimed that Iran does not have any leverage over the Palestinian militant group, Hamas, which, according to him, is totally independent.
Western powers believe that Iran supplies Hamas with weapons.
A rift between the Kuwaiti Parliament and the government of this oil-rich princedom over the visit of a controversial Iranian cleric has escalated into yet another political crisis.
On Tuesday, the Kuwaiti cabinet announced its resignation as three legislators prepared to question Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser al-Mohammad al-Sabahover for allowing the cleric, whom they accused of offending Sunnis, to enter this small Persian Gulf nation a few weeks ago.
The cleric, Mohammad Fali, has allegedly made derogatory remarks about the Prophet Mohammad’s companions, whom the Sunnis revere. Tensions have been reported in the past between the Sunni majority and the Shiite minority in Kuwait.
Although Fali left the country following a wave of protests against his visit, the crisis continued as the three Islamist lawmakers insisted on demanding formal clarifications from the prime minister, a member of the ruling family.
The ruler of the country, Sheik Sabah al Ahmad al Sabah, put on hold the resignation and ordered the ministers to continue attending to their duties until he takes his final decision, according to the State’s news agency, KUNA.
In yet another indication that the international financial crisis has arrived on the shores of the Persian Gulf, the largest mortgage lender in the United Arab Emirates, Amlak, will temporarily stop granting new home loans, according to media reports.
Experts say this is bad news for the UAE real estate market. As credits dwindle, the prices of real estate in this oil-rich emirate might further drop, and the whole economy might be negatively affected.
The UAE's English-language daily, the National, sounded the alarm, quoting Chris Dommett, chief executive of John Charcol Dubai, a mortgage advisory firm:
“I think they don’t have funds to lend. It sends a very negative message to the market at a time when they need some sort of positive news.”
Property prices fell last month by 4% in Dubai and 5% in Abu Dhabi, according to data from HSBC Bank cited by the National.
As the international financial crunch continues to hit Persian Gulf markets, trade at the Kuwait Stock Exchange was halted by a Kuwaiti court ruling today in an effort to curb the slump in the market’s slide, according to Kuwait’s official news agency KUNA.
The unprecedented ruling will be maintained until Nov. 17, when the court will review its decision aimed at preventing massive losses among small investors in this rich small emirate, which is the fourth-largest oil producer in the world.
In a first reaction, Kuwait's finance minister, Mustafa Shimali, said that his government would uphold the ruling but he criticized the court's decision as "dangerous," according to KUNA:
"We respect the court ruling and as a government we only have to implement it.... The consequences of this ruling would be dire.... How will those who filed the suit shoulder the consequences?"
This comes amid pressing demands from Kuwaiti investors for the government to intervene and stop the big losses in the emirate's stock market, the second largest in the region after that of Saudi Arabia.
On Saturday evening, Tunisian Web journalist Slim Boukhidir was heading to a local Internet cafe in the city of Sfax when he was stopped by a group of men and stuffed into a French-made automobile.
He was taken first to a police station and then he found himself back in the car and heading outside of the city and into the rural hinterlands.
The car stopped and the journalist, who was freed last July after spending eight months in prison for publicly criticizing President Zine el Abidine ben Ali, was released without harm.
But not without a warning, according to an account he gave to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists:
After leaving the police station, they started insulting me and threatened to inflict on me the same fate of Libyan Internet journalist Daif Al Ghazal, kidnapped and killed in neighboring Libya in 2005.
The U.S. gets all hot and bothered about human rights abuses and suppression of speech in places such as Iran or Syria. But it has remained relatively silent about an apparent uptick in repression of journalists among its allies in the Arab world, like the staunchly pro-American Tunisia or Saudi Arabia.
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