KUWAIT CITY, 2 June 2008 — The emir of Kuwait issued a thinly veiled warning to the newly elected Parliament yesterday that he might dissolve the house again if it did not cooperate with the government.
“Faced with the deviations and violations which threatened the nation’s interests ... I was forced to take the decision of dissolving the previous Parliament,” Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah told the inaugural session of the Parliament elected on May 17.
“My responsibility at this delicate stage ... after development has been stalled ... requires me to intervene anytime so that national interests do not fall victim to whims, irresponsible practices and narrow personal interests,” the emir said.
Meanwhile, hard-liners walked out of the Parliament’s inaugural meeting to protest the absence of head scarves on two women Cabinet ministers.
The nine men walked out as the ministers began taking their oath of office and only returned when the two women, Modhi Al-Homoud and Nouria Al-Subeih, had been sworn in. Al-Homoud, the minister of state for housing and development, ignored attempts by conservative lawmakers remaining in the chamber to take the floor as she read her oath, wearing a skirt rather than the head scarf and long robes.
Education Minister Nouria Al-Subeih, who does dress conservatively though not with a head scarf, was not interrupted. She went through a similar situation when she was first appointed in April 2007.
Kuwaiti women failed to win any seats in the two elections since they were given the right to run for office and vote, but one did come close in the last contest.
Three of the lawmakers also said they were protesting against Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammed Al-Sabah’s entire Cabinet because the portfolios were distributed on the bases of quotas for tribes and political groups, rather than “efficiency and honesty.”
