KUWAIT CITY, 24 June 2004 — Opposition liberal and Islamist groups accused the Kuwaiti government yesterday of aborting political reforms in the emirate by voting to delay a decision on a bill to amend the electoral law.
A statement signed by seven groups, who have some 20 MPs in the 50-seat Parliament, also branded the Cabinet headed by Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah as “anti-reformist” and vowed to continue to fight against “plots to abort democracy”.
“The government has shown its true position of being hostile to any reforms. ... This puts the government in a confrontation with political groups and elites,” the statement said.
After two sessions of heated debate in Parliament over a bill to cut the number of electoral districts from 25 to 10, the government on Saturday backed a motion to delay voting until October.
The bill was described as the first step toward political reform in Kuwait and could have paved the way for political parties to be legalized.
But Sheikh Sabah defended the government’s action as a measure to preserve “national unity” and “prevent dissent”.
The bill has divided the 50-member house almost equally, pitting opposition liberal and Islamist MPs who support the change against tribal and independent lawmakers who oppose it.
Reformists were dealt another blow yesterday as a session to debate a new press law was not held for lack of a quorum. Only one minister out of 16 and 23 MPs turned out.
Liberal MP Ali Al-Rashed lashed out at the government absence, saying “this amounts to an insult to Parliament”.
The draft press law cuts jail sentences on press offenses and end a two-decade government freeze on granting new licenses to publish newspapers. It also bans the detention of journalists and editors before a final court order.
The reformist bill stipulates a maximum one-year jail term for religious abuse or calls to overthrow the government, and one month for insulting the emir. It also gives courts full authority to replace prison terms with a fine.
Under the existing press law issued in 1961, such violations are treated as felonies punishable by several years in jail.
“We have sought to modernize the present law to ensure that freedoms of expression and opinion are safeguarded and strengthened. Many developments have taken place in the past four decades and need to be taken into account,” MP Mohammad Al-Busairi told AFP on Tuesday.
The draft stipulates that no newspaper can be shut down without a court verdict, depriving the government of administrative powers to close publications for up to two years and confiscate their licenses.
The government invoked this right in 1995 and 1999, closing the Al-Anba and Al-Siyassah dailies for five days each for publishing articles deemed harmful to the state’s interests.
Under the present law, journalists and writers can be jailed for offenses such as defamation, but are normally ordered to pay fines of less than 100 dinars.
In 1999, the head of the political science department at Kuwait University, Ahmed Al-Baghdadi, was handed a one-month jail term for publishing an article deemed offensive to Islam. He was pardoned by the emir after serving 13 days.
Parliamentary committees are also considering other reform legislation that would significantly broaden the emirate’s voter base, by giving women full political rights, allowing servicemen to vote, and lowering the voting age from 21 to 18.
Kuwait currently has only 136,000 eligible voters out of an indigenous population of 900,000. The bills’ passage would increase the voter base threefold.
