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Kuwait
Legislature
One of the most remarkable aspects of Kuwaiti politics in the
postindependence period is the National Assembly--one of the few
elected legislative bodies in the region. Preinvasion Kuwait was
one of the most politically open states in the region and the
most open in the gulf. It had a relatively free press and an assembly
elected by a small electorate of adult male citizens. The authors
of the postindependence constitution of 1962, aware of the precedent
set in the 1938 Legislative Assembly, saw the creation of an elected
legislative body as an important means to widen the popular consensus
and thereby further legitimize the rule of the Al Sabah, especially
at a time when the family's position was threatened by the Iraqi
claim to the entire territory of the new state. After the January
1963 election of the first National Assembly, the body evolved
to serve as a broad forum for discussion and dissent. The men
who dominated this assembly, however, were not the historical
elite but, with some exceptions, were Kuwaitis who benefited from
the state's generous welfare system. The historical opposition,
the merchants on whom the amir relied for money in the lean pre-oil
years, refrained from politics, devoting themselves instead to
investing the money the amir sent their way.
Although the constitution affords the assembly considerable power,
the body is limited by two major restrictions: the small size
of the electorate as defined by law, which restricts suffrage
to most adult male nationals whose ancestors were present in Kuwait
in 1920; and the power of the amir to dissolve the assembly virtually
at will. Nonetheless, the assembly plays a prominent role in raising
issues of public importance, reviewing and challenging government
policies and programs, and responding to constituent concerns.
It helps give Kuwait a much more open and public political life
than that in other gulf states.
The roots of the National Assembly began in the 1961 elections
for the Constituent Assembly, which drafted a constitution and
laid the groundwork for elections in 1963 to the first National
Assembly. The 1963 elections produced a solid opposition in the
National Bloc, which challenged government policy in a number
of areas. The opposition was so volatile that when elections were
next held in 1967, opponents charged the government with widespread
election fraud in an effort to restrict the contentious body.
The new assembly indeed proved more pliable. However, the 1971
elections returned a more confrontational assembly, one that devoted
much of its energies to the nationalization of the oil company.
Elections for the fourth assembly took place in 1975 and produced
a body more strongly opposed to the government than its predecessor.
In August 1976, Sabah as Salim dissolved the assembly and introduced
new restrictions on public assembly and speech. But in 1980, because
of renewed concern for popular support in light of the Iranian
Revolution of 1979 and the regional tension that accompanied the
subsequent Iran-Iraq War, the new amir, Shaykh Jabir al Ahmad,
allowed elections to be held. The fifth assembly was highly confrontational,
as was the sixth, elected in 1985. When in 1986 the assembly began
attacking members of the ruling family, primarily in connection
with the handling of the 1982 Suq al Manakh stock market crash,
the amir again suspended the assembly. The minister of justice,
a member of the ruling family, was forced to resign because of
allegations he had used public influence for personal gain in
resolving the crash. As in 1976, external pressures from Saudi
Arabia, which was highly critical of Kuwait's more participatory
system, probably played a role in the amir's decision.
Opposition to the decision again to suspend the assembly manifested
itself in the Constitutional Movement of 1989-90. In 1989 members
of the dissolved assembly began organizing and calling for reinstitution
of the assembly and articles of the 1962 constitution that the
amir had suspended as well in 1986. They were joined by many merchants,
previously politically quiescent--but now alienated by the ruler's
inability to provide the level of economic support they had come
to expect owing to the fall in oil prices--and by such others
as professionals, liberals, and Islamists. The movement quickly
spread through the diwaniyat (sing., diwaniyah),
private weekly social meetings in the homes of prominent families,
until it became a series of popular antigovernment demonstrations.
As the movement developed, the amir and the crown prince responded
with both carrots and sticks. In an effort to divide the opposition,
the government announced in 1990 that although it would not restore
the National Assembly it would establish a National Council comprising
fifty elected members and twenty-five appointed members. The new
body would thus be less representative than the old assembly.
It would also have less power: for example, it could not enact
legislation directly. The opposition opposed such an extra-constitutional
council, viewing it not only as an effort to preclude a genuinely
representative assembly but also as a way for the government to
prepare loyalist candidates in the event that genuine assembly
elections were held. (Indeed, when National Assembly elections
were eventually scheduled in the postinvasion period, a large
number of National Council members announced they would run.)
Although opposition leaders and others boycotted the elections,
the new body was nonetheless constituted following elections for
the nonappointed seats in June 1990. This new body had just begun
meeting when the Iraqi invasion rendered it obsolete. The National
Council met again on several occasions after the end of the Persian
Gulf War in 1991 but was eliminated when the National Assembly
was reconstituted by elections in October 1992.
Elections for the National Assembly were held on October 5, 1992,
by amiri decree, in accordance with the 1962 constitution. Seven
political groups (parties remained banned) backed candidates in
the campaign. The groups included the Islamic Constitutional Movement,
the Islamic Parliamentarian Alliance, the Islamic National Alliance
(a Shia group), and the Democratic Forum (progressive former Arab
nationalists). The election proceeded without major incident.
Opposition and independent candidates, including many associated
with the prodemocracy movement, won the majority, thirty to thirty-five
of the assembly's fifty seats. Progovernment candidates won the
remaining fifteen to twenty seats, primarily in tribal constituencies.
Islamist candidates won nineteen seats, a dramatic increase over
the nine they had held in the former assembly. Seventeen of the
elected members had served in previous assemblies.
Among the issues the members promised to raise in the new assembly
were public spending and related financial concerns, foreign policy
and the events leading up to the Iraqi invasion, the political
status of women (many of whom demonstrated for suffrage during
the elections), and Islamic law. Following the elections, Prime
Minister and Crown Prince Saad al Abd Allah announced the formation
on October 17 of the new cabinet. The cabinet included fewer members
of the ruling family than had previous cabinets and six National
Assembly opposition members among the sixteen ministers. The new
cabinet, however, still left family members holding key posts,
including that of minister of foreign affairs, which was returned
to the long-serving but unpopular Sabah al Ahmad Al Sabah.
Data as of January 1993
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