KUWAIT CITY, 19 May 2003 — Kuwait’s Cabinet approved yesterday a bill calling for parliamentary elections on July 5 and sent it to the emir for ratification, a statement said.
Once the bill is signed by Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, the emirate’s electoral campaign will kick off and prospective candidates will be able to register to contest the 50 parliamentary seats. Hundreds of Kuwaitis are expected to register as candidates for the 25 constituencies.
The law stipulates that all candidates should be Kuwaiti by birth and registered on the electoral roll. They must be over 30 years old, know how to read and write Arabic, and have no criminal record.
Around 126,000 Kuwaiti men have registered to vote in the 2003 elections out of an indigenous population of more than 850,000.
Women are not allowed to vote or run for election. The law stipulates that only Kuwaiti males over 21 and naturalized men who have been Kuwaiti nationals for at least 20 years are eligible to vote. This contradicts the 1962 constitution which guarantees equal status for both sexes, however.
Kuwaiti women have been pressing for their political rights since the 1960s when the emirate held its first parliamentary elections. Kuwaiti MPs in November 1999 narrowly rejected a bill to grant women the right to vote and stand for office in parliamentary elections from 2003 as proposed by the emir.
