MANAMA, 16 December 2006 — In an eleventh-hour surprise decision, the 17-member parliamentary bloc Al-Wefaq Islamic Society decided to boycott the opening session of the National Assembly yesterday on the basis of a controversial report blaming the government for manipulating representation in Parliament, as well as the makeup of the king’s Cabinet.
The move forced the 23 attending Parliament members to postpone their protocol swearing-in and the election of the chairman and his two deputies, which was set to take place following an address by King Hamad to the assembly.
The move came in protest over what the bloc’s Chairman Ali Salman said was an attempt to prevent them from holding the Parliament chairman’s post and the reappointment of controversial figures to the new Cabinet and Shoura, the upper house of the assembly.
Salman also distanced the society from the recently appointed minister of state for foreign affairs, Nizar Sadeq Al-Baharna, who is a founding member of the society, claiming that they were not consulted prior to his selection.
“Al-Baharna was appointed based on talks between him and the government and we were not consulted about this political message, so it does not concern us,” Salman told a press conference ahead of the opening ceremony.
In a statement following the meeting, the group also said it was particularly upset by the appointment of Ahmad bin Atiyatullah Al-Khalifa as minister for Cabinet affairs.
He added that their decision to boycott came after the reappointment of some high ranking government officials and a Shoura Council member whose names appeared in a controversial August report by the London-registered Gulf Center for Democratic Development.
The report is dubbed “Bandar Gate” after its co-author Salah Al-Bandar, a Briton of Sudanese origin and accused spy who was deported in September after he alleged that a secret government grouping has been conspiring to rig the results of last month’s parliamentary and municipal elections in order to maintain a Sunni majority in Parliament. The Sunnis represent a minority in the Gulf country.
