In one of those political pirouettes in which ideologues excel, Kuwait’s right-wing Islamist deputies appear to have abandoned their life-long opposition to the enfranchisement of women. Well, not quite, but sort of abandoned. They are offering a compromise under which women would be allowed to vote but would be denied the right to also stand for public office.
The government, and the moderate parliamentarians who support full enfranchisement, should reject the so-called compromise out of hand. What the Islamists are proposing is a political maneuver aimed at saving themselves from a spectacular defeat on an issue that has plagued Kuwait for decades.
The Islamists have always maintained that women are at best only half good as men. This is why they are offering women only half of what is accepted as a right for men. Their proposal, far from representing a step toward legal equality across the gender line, amounts to a reaffirmation of a form of apartheid. They may also have come up with the trick idea in a bid to divide those who support women’s enfranchisement between those who are ready to go all the way and those who wish to halt halfway. Worse still, the proposal amounts to a restriction on the rights of the male voters to choose whomever they wish for office. It amounts to a pre-selection of candidates as was widely practiced in the now defunct Soviet Union and its satellites. If the principle of pre-selection is enshrined in law there is no reason why other categories of “the excluded” should not be established in future. For example, one could exclude tribal chiefs or barbers or dentists, or theologians, for that matter, from standing for office.
The Islamist proposal is also flawed logically. All elections are based on the principle that the electors have the wisdom to make a choice, and are, in that sense, at least as wise as the people they vote for. One cannot have it both ways. If women are allowed to vote, thus affecting the outcome of any election, how can one assume that they lack the wisdom also to hold office?
Kuwait’s own experience shows that the anti-woman logic holds no water. More than half of all university students in Kuwait are women. Girls also top every examination result in almost every single discipline every year. All in all, the female half of the Kuwaiti population appears to be better educated than the male one. Thus, it makes no sense to shut the better-educated half of the population out of decision-making at the legislative and executive levels. By all accounts full franchise for women is something that a majority of Kuwaitis, men and women, want. The emir, the prime minister and almost the entire Cabinet, also support the measure. By most counts full enfranchisement for women could collect as many as 32 votes in the 50-seat National Assembly, enough to put it on the statute book.
Kuwait must remember that it owes its liberation from Baathist occupation to democracies that were prepared to come and fight for its independence and sovereignty. Fate chose Kuwait’s camp in 1990-91. Kuwait should not abandon it on so crucial an issue.
