KUWAIT CITY, July 5: Kuwaitis went to the polls on Saturday to elect a 50-seat parliament.
Unfazed by sweltering daytime temperatures of almost 50 degrees Celsius, Kuwaiti men eligible to vote cast their ballots from 8am to 8pm in the emirate’s 25 electoral constituencies.
A total of 136,715 men, out of a local population of 898,000, were qualified to choose the new parliament.
Women are barred from voting or running for political office.
Final results are not expected to be announced until early Sunday morning.
Analysts predict a change of up to 60 per cent, above the usual 50 per cent, following weeks of frenetic campaigning by 246 hopefuls.
Local issues dominated election platforms, primarily employment, the economy, education, healthcare, housing, Islamization, political reform and a separation of the posts of crown prince and premier.
Many Kuwaitis are hoping that monumental regional changes, particularly in Iraq, will trigger long-awaited domestic reform.
“I voted for the people I believe will think about the good of the country,” Saleh al-Marshood, a retired 50-year-old, said after casting his ballot in the hotly-contested Mishrif-Bayan constituency.
Mohammed Hatem, a 43-year-old PR manager for the state-run petrochemicals company Equate, said his priorities were “international relations, because Iraq is now an open country, the future of the Gulf, oil prices, transparency in state auditing, and most importantly the objectives of university education.
“Kuwait is like my daughter, and I have to choose from 17 husbands to marry her off, so whichever one fits the bill I will pick,” said Hatem, a liberal who supports women’s rights.
“Give it (the right to vote) to the women. It’s a concept, a principle. If they vote and succeed, that’s another thing.”
Bader al-Khudari, a 40-year-old education professor, said he was voting “to stop all corruption from top to bottom” and for candidates who would focus on developing and modernising the education system.
Women meanwhile held mock elections at the Kuwait Journalists’ Association.
“I feel great,” Hana Razzuqi said after voting in a makeshift booth. “This is the first time I’ve been through the process of elections, or as it’s supposed to be.
“In a way, it is a protest vote, maybe ours will be a shadow parliament,” she said. “I don’t expect marvellous results out of this but it’s the first real initiative. It’s well known that rights are acquired, not given.”
“Eighty-five per cent of Kuwaitis are deprived of practising democracy,” Al-Qabas newspaper wrote Saturday, anticipating an 80 percent turnout of voters.
Only Kuwaiti males over 21 and naturalized men who have been citizens for at least 20 years are eligible to vote in this tiny oil-rich emirate, which in 1963 became the first Gulf country with an elected parliament.
“We will accept whatever Kuwaitis choose,” First Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah told Saturday’s Al-Rai Al-Aam newspaper.
Sheikh Sabah said he hoped any elected parliament would practise its role and direct its energy to serve development and construction in cooperation with the executive power because both are “in one boat.”
Political tensions have run high in recent years between the government and parliament, the former accusing the latter of non-cooperation.
Political parties are banned in Kuwait but at least six Islamist and liberal groupings represented in the outgoing parliament are vying for seats this time round.
Although they are not officially recognised, they function in public without restriction.
The main groupings are the Islamic Constitutional Movement (ICM), the Salafi Movement, the National Democratic Movement (NDM), the Kuwait Democratic Forum (KDF) and the Shiite National Islamic Alliance (NIA).
Parliamentary hopefuls include 45 Sunni Islamists, 16 of them fielded by the ICM, 10 by the Salafi Movement and six from an offshoot of the latter.
There are 13 independent Islamist candidates, though they are largely tribal, 13 liberals and 50 Shiites, of whom 15 are Islamist.
The remainder are tribal or independents. —AFP