Liberals lose most seats in Kuwaiti Parliament

John Kifner NYT


CAIRO Kuwaiti liberals, hopeful that the downfall
of Saddam Hussein would strengthen their efforts
at modernization, suffered a stunning setback in
weekend elections, with traditionalists winning a
sweeping victory.
.
The Islamic traditionalists, both Sunni and
Shiite, took more than a third of the seats in the
50-seat Parliament in the voting Saturday,
according to unofficial results made public
Sunday. The liberals, meanwhile, were almost wiped
out. [...].

The liberals, who had made extending the vote to
women a major rallying cry of their campaign, had
expected that the removal of the threat from
neighboring Iraq´s dictator would help them gain
more independence from the ruling al-Sabah royal
family. There had been predictions of victory,
with the independent newspaper al-Qabas saying
only Friday that the new Parliament "has to be a
turning point in eliminating the flaws of our
democracy."
.
But the trend was clearly against the liberals.
[...].

Formal political parties are outlawed in Kuwait,
so the candidates run on the basis of loose
groupings, which may account for some of the
discrepancies in the tallies. But there was no
debate about the overall results.
.
The leading group of Islamic traditionalists, the
Islamic Constitutional Movement, is a political
arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. The constitutional
movement seeks to introduce strict Islamic law

***I thought, Kuwait already had strict Islamic
law - what more do they want****

and views American policy in the Middle East as
biased toward Israel and bent on controlling Arab
oil wealth. Over all, the party and its allies
should control about 45 percent of the votes in
Parliament.
.
In truth, the Parliament has little real power,
although it is supposed to vote on all laws. It
can be - and has been - dissolved on the orders of
the country´s emir, or ruler. By the constitution,
both the emir and the crown prince are above
criticism.
.
The emir, Sheik Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah, and the
crown prince, Sheik Saad al-Abdullah al-Sabah, are
in their 70´s and ailing. The de facto ruler is
the foreign minister, Sheik Sabah al-Ahmad al
Sabah.
.
Of the 898,000 residents of Kuwait, only 136,715 -
men with full citizenship - are eligible to vote.
Most of the population is made up of foreigners
who do much of the work.
.
Women voted in a mock election as a demonstration
of their desire to gain the vote. The results of
the real election, however, made this appear
unlikely.

http://www.iht.com/articles/101909.html