Kuwait’s road to democracy

POPULAR urges for democratic governance have been growing in the emirates of the Persian Gulf during the past decade or two. Kuwait, stands apart from the rest of them in that it has been something like an oasis of relatively liberal dispositions in a desert of authoritarian tradition. Its politics is the subject of our inquiry today.

Kuwait is a tiny country with an area of less than 7,000 square miles, settled initially by Arab tribes in the early seventeenth century, with a present population of about 2,857,000 of which only 980,000 are citizens; most of the rest being foreign workers living as temporary residents. It has virtually no arable land, but it is believed to contain about ten per cent of the world’s known oil reserves.

Kuwait city, where the bulk of the country’s population lives, has been a commercial centre, cosmopolitan in its making, tolerant of diversity, and somewhat liberal in outlook for centuries. The great majority of its people are Sunni Muslims; the Shia being about 30 per cent. The Sunni are almost equally divided between townspeople and the tribal folks (the “Bedouin”). Following the generation of oil revenues and the concomitant economic boom, many of the latter have moved to the city’s farther outskirts. They work in the military and police services, and as taxi drivers, unskilled or semi-skilled workers in construction and other industries. A wide economic and cultural gulf separates them from the merchants and educated urbanites.

Women constitute nearly 57 per cent of the population, 66 per cent of those who hold a college degree (B.A. and higher), and 34 per cent of the workforce. Many of them occupy higher-ranking positions in government, banking, commerce and industry, education, and the professions.

Kuwait has been a monarchy since 1752 when one of the leading families in the town, known as Al-Sabah, became the ruler, not through conquest but with the acquiescence, as it were, of the other leading families. One of the Al-Sabah, with the concurrence of the other family members, became the emir. With an occasional exception, the emirs ruled lightly, did not impose taxes, and got their spending money through levies that the merchants paid, and which worked more like donations than taxes.

Kuwait, a British protectorate between 1898 and 1960, became independent in 1961, and adopted a democratic constitution the following year. It provided for a diluted separation of powers in a mix of legislative authority and “royal prerogative.” The executive power is to be exercised by a prime minister, appointed by the emir, and cabinet ministers (not exceeding 16) whom he (the prime minister) chooses. The National Assembly, with a term of four years, consists of 50 elected members, but as many as 15 cabinet ministers are entitled to be its ex officio voting members. The prime minister may have a number of legislators as his ministers, but must take at least one.

The emir appoints the “crown prince” from amongst his close relatives, who is to be his successor and, until then, serves as the prime minister. Several members of the ruling family get the more important portfolios in his cabinet (e.g., defence, foreign affairs, finance, interior). The government is accountable to the legislature, but only in a manner of speaking. The National Assembly quizzes ministers on the floor, and it may appoint committees to investigate the performance of their respective departments. If it adopts a no-confidence motion against a specific minister, he will lose his position. The emir may or may not accept a similar motion against the prime minister; he may choose instead to dissolve the Assembly and order new elections.

The Assembly cannot dismiss the government, but it can bring the latter to a virtual halt by adopting a resolution of “non-cooperation,” meaning that it will not pass government-sponsored bills, presumably including financial measures. In this situation, and others in which the Assembly has got into a deadlock with the government, the emir may dismiss the government and appoint a new prime minister, or he may dissolve the assembly. He can also suspend the assembly as, for instance, he did in 1976 and kept it out until 1980, and then again in 1986, in which case he did not call it back until after Kuwait’s “liberation” from Iraqi occupation (February 1991).

The constitution assures citizens equal rights under the law, including the freedom to practise one’s religion and the right to freedom of expression. All male citizens, 21 years old and over, except those serving in the military, and members of the ruling family bearing the title of “shaykh,” are entitled to vote. Women got the right to vote in 2005, and since then Kuwait has had universal adult franchise

Masouma Mubarak, a professor at the University of Kuwait, told a Washington Post reporter that even though democracy is not deeply entrenched in her country at this point, organiSations of civil society are thriving. The press is free and often critical of the government. Five Arabic and two English language daily newspapers, plus numerous weekly and monthly periodicals, circulate. Political parties, as such, are not allowed, but combinations going by other names, such as political “blocs,” do openly debate issues and mount election campaigns. A much older forum for political discussion is “diwaniya,” a private gathering of men.

Kuwait has held 11 parliamentary elections since the adoption of its constitution (1962). These are believed to have been free and fair with the exception of the one in 1976, in which the government engineered a mis- counting of the votes. Until the beginning of the 1990s, Arab nationalists, liberals, tribesmen, and pro-government groups used to be predominant, and the “Islamists” did not win more than a couple of seats in the assembly. But the scales have shifted dramatically in the latter’s favour in recent years.

The election held in July 2003 returned 21 Islamists (both Sunni and Shia), 13 government supporters, 12 independents (non-partisan), and four liberals. The Islamists did equally well in the election of June 2006, winning 21 seats (17 Sunni and 4 Shia). Liberals got six seats this time, “Reformers” (new contestants who ran as the government’s critics) won nine. The remaining seats went to pro-government candidates.

I have encountered slight variation in figures for the election results as I have gone from one source to the next. The figures given above should therefore be taken as approximations.

Including the 15 votes of ministers, the national assembly has a total membership of 65. Given the election results, it appears that even with its own 15 votes the government cannot count on having majority support for its legislative proposals in the present assembly, unless it wants to, and can, seduce some of the “independent” members to its own side. And, that it may not be able to accomplish on a continuing basis. It means also that the government will have to show more respect to the majority opinion in the assembly, that is, if it wants to avoid a crisis and the contingency of having to dissolve the assembly.

The assembly is thus likely to emerge as the dominant organ of the state in all matters in which its concurrence is needed. This is evident from the fact that within two weeks of its inauguration (July 17), the assembly passed a bill to reduce the number of electoral districts from 25 to five. The government supported the move this time even though the emir had dissolved the assembly precisely over this issue just a few weeks earlier (May 21, 2006).

In a country as prosperous as Kuwait, it is hard to see what there might be for the people to fight about. There are, nevertheless, a few things over which the Kuwaitis have been agitated and which became major issues in recent elections. The first and foremost of them (recently resolved as mentioned above) related to the electoral system. The country was divided into 25 districts each one of which sent to the assembly the two top vote getters in an election. According to one of the reports I have seen, citizens eligible to vote in the 2006 election numbered approximately 340,000, more than half of whom were women, who did not vote in any of the previous elections. Note also that not all of the eligible voters were registered to vote. All of this meant that the average number of registered voters in each district (before 2006) came to less than 5,000. The opposition argued that this exceedingly small number enabled the pro-government candidates, and possibly even some others, to buy votes.

Second, the opposition saw corruption in high places, including the cabinet, some of whose members were accused of making money by manipulating the award of government contracts. Third, a majority of the elected members in the assembly opposed the involvement of foreign companies in oil drilling and processing in the country’s northern areas. Fourth, the Islamic parties wanted to Islamise the school syllabuses, and to enforce the Shariat as the law of the land instead of treating it only as a source of inspiration and guidance for laws to be made by men.

The election of 2006 was historic in the sense that for the first time in the country’s history women became entitled to vote and contest. Twenty-eight of them did run but none won. Three reasons for their failure come to mind. First, even though the overall voter turnout in this election exceeded 75 per cent, less than 45 per cent of the eligible women voters went out to cast their ballots. Second, being relatively conservative like many Arab women elsewhere, the majority of those who did vote, voted for men, rather than women, candidates. Third, women were new and inexperienced in the game of electioneering. They did not align with any of the established political blocs or groups that might have supported them. But it seems that the women who contested and lost are not disheartened. Many of them have told newsmen that they expect to return to the hustings next time and win.

Email: anwarsyed@cox.net

Power at the cost of merit

LAST month President Musharraf spoke long, tiresomely long, on radio and TV and patted himself on the back for the success of his policies and the achievements of his administration in the economic field. Economy has its priority for though man cannot live by bread alone he assuredly cannot live without it.

The government publications report that in the last six years 10 per cent of the population has climbed out of absolute poverty — a claim that independent economists strongly contest. Putting that aside, a more painful experience of the rich and poor alike is that the citizens do not get fair and just treatment from the government in the ordinary course of events nor sympathy or help when they desperately need it. It is a recurring attribute of every Pakistani government, past or present, that it is neither evenhanded nor caring. The sole commitment of most leaders is to themselves.

This statement is borne out by their behaviour in the two major natural calamities that the country had to suffer within a year — the earthquake of last October and the rains this August. The rescue operations in the quake-hit areas were all conducted by the army and volunteers coming from all over the world. The participation of our own civil administration was hardly in evidence.

In the lesser calamity of rains, the people facing danger and death, as in Kalpani torrent, had to brave it alone. According to first-hand reports coming from Mardan the only gesture of help by the administration for the dead and drowning was a condolence visit by the chief minister. The official agencies no longer seem inclined to serve the people in times normal nor feel compelled to help them when in distress. The government at the political level does only what it considers is necessary for its own survival.

The ministers and the parliamentarians have come to believe that to remain in power and to win at the polls, the party ticket, the goodwill of the field officials, personal wealth and a band of roughnecks count for more than their record of service to the people. The career civil servants have also come to learn that they can keep their jobs and also expect to move on to better and higher positions by doing the bidding of their political bosses. What they do for the common man hardly counts.

This rot is old but spreading fast with every change in regime. In keeping a government together, especially when it happens to be a coalition of contending elements, the device commonly used is to recruit teachers, doctors, engineers and, more lucrative, the police, excise and customs inspectors bypassing the normal selection procedures. This practice which is both irregular and unjust is at its peak at the moment.

The Sindh chief minister in a press conference after the last budget said he had 45,000 jobs to fill but he would not allow the public service commission to “dish them out”. He would make appointments himself and, ironically, on merit. There could be no better illustration of the breakdown of the institutions and personal bravado. Appointments are allegedly being made through the backdoor while wrangling goes on for apportioning job quotas among parties and individuals.

The Punjab law minister, Basharat Raja, has directed the district coordination officers to “listen” to the members of the provincial assemblies while giving jobs that lie in their power. The DCOs are thus confronted with the choice of taking the nominees either of the MPAs or of the nazims with merit nowhere in the reckoning. The Sindh chief minister too has reinforced this position by directing the district government officials to follow his, and not the nazim’s, directions in all matters. The directions, as is well known, mostly relate to the appointment and transfer of officials.

According to the findings of a citizens’ rights group, there are 30,000 ghost schools in the country. The funds and salaries for these schools are thus being embezzled and at the same time the student enrolment figures are being falsified. Quite obviously, the officials, parliamentarians, nazims and councilors all connive at it.

On another plane, public funds are being used for personal advantage. One-fourth of a special discretionary fund of Rs100 million in the NWFP has been allocated to Chief Minister Akram Durrani’s home district, Bannu. (Imagine, only a million rupees could be spared for the dead and bereaved of Mardan). The distant, mountainous and most backward Chitral got nothing.

Then the auditor-general has informed us that the law minister of the country has distributed 83 per cent of the national funds under his control meant for the victims of police torture and other human rights abuses in his own constituency. No cognisance is taken to stop or to punish such blatant abuse of power and public money. The sole concern is to win the next elections. The rights of the people, their welfare and good governance are all subject to this overriding consideration.

While the commission on government reforms is feverishly at work, the news is that the governor and chief minister of Sindh have agreed on a formula for the distribution of jobs among the coalition partners. President Musharraf came to Karachi to bless it. It is an occasion for the chairman of the commission to ponder whether good governance is at all possible without appointments on merit in public services by an independent agency.

Before the rule of merit and transparency in public appointments is finally and formally abandoned, perhaps the waiting candidates who possess talent but lack political patrons should join hands to have recourse to a court of law. The superior courts for once feel inclined to prevent the illegalities of the government.

Bugs in the system

DO journalists routinely bug phones and illegally intrude on peoples’ privacy? That question is bound to be posed after this week’s police operation that resulted in charges against a reporter working for the “News of the World”. As it happens, we know the answer, thanks to a highly detailed, if little reported, document produced by the information commissioner in May this year.

The document — 'What Price Privacy?’ - contains definitive evidence that many national newspapers, tabloid and broadsheet, habitually break the law by paying private detectives for information about people in public life. Operation Motorman, an investigation by the police and the information commissioner, raided the offices of one investigator and found a “systemic and highly lucrative business” documenting thousands of offences committed by the private detectives on behalf of 305 named journalists.

The information obtained included itemised telephone bills, mobile phone records, driving licence details, ex-directory numbers, and information from the police national computer and the driving licence and vehicle authorities. The targets included broadcasters, football managers and members of the royal family - as well as people randomly caught up in their lives. A decorator who parked his van outside a lottery winner’s house found himself the subject of media investigation via the detective agency.

On this basis alone, from just one private detective, there is overwhelming evidence that elements of the press consider themselves above the law. The industry’s code of self-regulation allows for a degree of intrusion into privacy where an editor can display a clear public interest. But the vast majority of cases in Operation Motorman showed no evidence of serious investigative journalism. These were illegal trawls for high-grade gossip.

All of which invites the question of what the industry’s self-regulator, the Press Complaints Commission, has reacted. This week the PCC’s chairman, Sir Christopher Meyer, did issue a strong reminder to journalists of their obligations under its code of conduct. But the PCC has until now remained remarkably incurious and unwilling to instigate an inquiry of its own, despite the prima facie evidence against hundreds of journalists. The information commissioner’s report told the PCC to take a “much stronger line” to get its house in order. If the PCC wrings its hands and does nothing the press cannot complain if others, including politicians, the courts and the police, step into the vacuum. That is the last thing most journalists would want. But there is a remorseless logic to the consequences of inaction.

— The Guardian, London

Skipping security line

AVIATION officials claim that airport security waits on Thursday weren’t much longer than normal. But to travellers, some queues seemed longer than your average Siberian bread line after the Transportation Security Administration added new requirements — including removing all liquids from carry-on luggage — to the long list of security protocols airline passengers already had to endure.

Most air travellers took the beefed-up security — and the occasionally interminable waits that followed — in stride. First — and business — class passengers in most airports, on the other hand, didn’t have to. As usual, higher-class passengers skipped most of the security queues at hubs such as Dulles and Los Angeles international airports. That’s hardly fair.

We understand why travellers in first class and business get preferential treatment in airline baggage lines; it’s one of the perks they pay for. Checked baggage handling is a service that airlines elect to provide, and they can administer it however they see fit.

—The Washington Post