The course of political reforms in Kuwait is, apparently, progressing at a snail’s pace, assuming there is any reform at all in the first place. The mixed up priorities combined with the slowness in implementation have made the Kuwaiti people lose confidence in reforms.
The basis of reforms should be the nature and quality of the representation in the National Assembly. In the past three years three ministers were removed from office because of dispute between the assembly and the government. Five members in the present ministry had been interrogated or face the threat of interrogation by the house.
On the other hand, there are dozens of draft bills awaiting the immediate attention of the house. The bills mostly relate to reforms and regulations affecting the people in general which in turn would strengthen the weakened social framework in the country. Some of them are as important as any pertaining to international and regional relations.
The developments in the country in recent weeks show that the conflict between the assembly and the government has gone too far, particularly over the draft bill on women’s participation in the municipal and general elections.
Not all those who stood against the bill were opposed to the principle of women getting their due political and civil rights. On the other hand, some of the deputies were attempting to force a deal with the government in return for their support for the reform bill. Their deal aimed at a salary hike for the state employees.
The government previously rejected the demand for a rise in government employees’ salary. The pro-employees stand would, undoubtedly, boost the popularity of the deputies among the voters in general, particularly when the talk of the assembly dissolution is in the air.
They would go to the people with the convincing argument that the dissolution of the assembly and new elections were necessitated because of their adamant stand to help the working people. The argument would be more appealing to the common man because he is aware that a good share of the public wealth has been arrogated by a certain section of the people through corrupt means and these deputies were only demanding a small share of it for the ordinary employees through perfectly legal means.
It now looks there is a lack of confidence between the government and the house; this has unfortunately been at the cost of people’s welfare.
A shortsighted government adopts short-term solutions ignoring more important long- term avenues. The Kuwait government is not an exception. The present election laws give more importance to the narrow interests leaving aside the interests of wider sections of the people. Further, the house members are the products of such laws.
A detailed study of the results of the elections in the last three terms of the Parliament in Kuwait reveals that those who reached the Parliament received 20 percent votes of their constituencies or even less with the sole exception of Mr. Jassem Al-Khorafi.
We should remember that only about 15 percent of the total population has voting rights. All women and the men serving in the security forces and men under twenty-one but above 18 have been excluded from the voting. Therefore I believe it is not right to call the assembly the National Assembly. A national assembly should have the representation of the entire population in a country.
The candidates who were elected in the last elections had a very slim margin of votes ranging from one to hundred. A major ailment affecting the body politic of Kuwait is the fact that a deputy, who knows he can win the election with the support of the 20 percent of members of the constituency, becomes a captive of the small electing group that could be sectarian, tribal or clannish. Money may also play a big role in scattering the votes. The present crisis is also partly due to the fact the elected body was originally planned 40 years ago for a small population of 300, 000. The country’s population has now crossed the million mark and thus restricts the freedom of movement for all the players. There are other factors such as the obstacles in the way of the functioning of modern political organizations except on ethnic, religious or sectarian lines or the absence of multiparty government system.
The present political crisis, therefore, was not unexpected. Neither could it be solved with some simple solutions. The time has come for the introduction of a modern electoral system with widened constituencies facilitating the operation of political blocs, proportional representation etc. The need for greater reforms is dictated not just by Kuwait’s internal developments and higher national aspirations for qualitative improvement in the system but by the changing scenario of regional and international developments that cannot be overlooked.
The rapid developments in the Gulf and Arab regions and international interventions in the surrounding areas for meaningful political reforms should also be considered.
There was a time when the appellation National Assembly was all right. No longer. The world evaluates all our reforms on the basis of changes in the electoral system. Can we hope immediate steps in this direction?
— Mohamad Alrumaihi is professor of political sociology at Kuwait University.
