Dr. Khalid Al-Shafi
The Gulf region is confused about the movement and change which it sees in Kuwait. The views expressed in a state of confusion vary in many cases. On the one hand there are demands by constitutional institutions, elected parliament, independent media and institutions of civil society as it is found in Kuwait and on the other hand they want a soft activity that walks with the convoy that does not get angry and struggle as well as neither held accountable nor questioned.
The last spark, which started from the growing crisis, was the march of thousands of demonstrators into the building of the Kuwaiti Parliament, in protest against what they described as assault of the security forces on a number of them to prevent them from reaching the home of the Prime Minister to demand his removal from the office and hold early parliamentary elections. This came after a number of Kuwaiti opposition MPs called and urged their supporters to come out in the street and sit in Iradah square opposite the parliament building to demand the resignation of the government, dissolve parliament and call early elections against the backdrop of what they described as government’s violations of some articles of the constitution because of its participation in the vote to cancel the investigations made against the president of Council of Ministers. The tension rose after nearly three months on the issue of corruption against the background of deposits of millions of riyals, suspicions of money laundering and its serious repercussions like bribery and external transfers of public money into the personal account of His Highness the Prime Minister. It is a matter in which a number of Members of Parliament are accused of receiving bribes from the Prime Minister and the same led the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs to resign. It is the scandal which is associated with the story of deputy and the cupboard of his mother. He is one of the parliamentarians who tried to take millions of Kuwaiti dinars into their bank accounts. The story says that a deputy wanted to take nearly four million Kuwaiti dinars (about fourteen and a half million dollars). The chief director of the bank contacted him to ask: How did you get this large amount? He answered: “I found it in my mother’s wardrobe!!” She, before her death, recommended me to construct a mosque in Kuwait and another outside Kuwait and after her death I searched her room, opened her wardrobe and found the amount!! The story, which spread throughout the Gulf says that a deputy went to withdraw some money from the ATM machine and the machine replied him saying that your balance is not sufficient to complete the transaction, please refer to “wardrobe of your mother!”
The anger at the mismanagement in Kuwait explodes in stages. I cannot say how often I heard the argument that emerged from the womb of the Kuwaiti society as there is grief and pain on the deterioration of the situation in a country which is a pioneer in political, economic, media, intellectual, artistic, academic, industrial and commercial fields. Nawaf Al Fezia points out that the last hospital in Kuwait was built in 1978 and the foundation of Jaber Hospital was laid before ten years. We are still waiting for the first hospital in Kuwait after 30 years. Al Fezia mentions that 10 years have passed from the days of skyrocketing oil prices and eight years have passed since the end of the danger of Saddam, but in 10 years, Dubai has become a global city from a small village and Qatar will host the Football World Cup, the most important world championship to be hosted for the first time in an Arab country which is the smallest Arab country by area. In 10 years the Grand Mosque has expanded twice and two Haj cities have been established in Saudi Arabia; even Bahrain, if the current unfortunate events didn’t take place, would have got the international attention for being the most important financial port in the region. In last ten years we have not seen a new airport or new planes or university or hospital in Kuwait.
But who bears the guilt in all these political and social tensions escalating in Kuwait, which is clearly defined after return and liberation from foreign invasion and it was supposed to get the opposite. The conflict is going on between two key streams in the home and the people of Kuwait are divided between this stream and the other. The first stream carries the members of the council who are called “shouting MPs”. They use the tools of parliamentary oversight in an arbitrary manner through the exaggeration in the presentation of interrogations of members of the government for reasons far from the public interest. They are deliberately restricting the government and exceeding the limits of their powers prescribed in the constitution as well as using undesirable language within the council in an unprecedented way. They intentionally direct interrogations to the members of the royal family in a way that suggests that they are challenging it. In addition to that they halted many development projects in Kuwait including the plan that was approved by the government worth five billion dollars aimed at countering the effects of current global financial crisis on the economy of Kuwait claiming that it was “devoid of transparency and objectivity”. They obstructed the march of democratic reforms as they refused to give Kuwaiti women their political rights and allow them to participate in the parliamentary elections as voters and candidates. This is the issue for which the government made strenuous efforts.
The other stream holds the government responsible for the recurrence of such political crises and stresses that the members of parliament do not exceed their authority when using the supervisory tools prescribed for them constitutionally, but the problem lies in the fact that the government does not accept the rules of the democratic game and it does not want to be questioned and held accountable. Whenever the members of the government are brought for interrogation they succeed in a vote of confidence as the leadership resorts to change the minister or change the government or dissolve the parliament and does not deal with these interrogations as a right guaranteed by the constitution to members of parliament. The leadership must reply to their interrogations or inquiries, as they argue that the interrogation of the prime minister is not a challenge to the ruling family, as long as the Kuwaiti Constitution gave the right expressly to members of the parliament to interrogate every authority of the government including the Prime Minister, who may be questioned, but he should not be allowed to cast the vote of confidence in it. The government is weak from the point of view of this stream and lacks a work programme. It is not serious in dealing with corruption and the completion of several strategic development projects and fears questioning. It seeks to aggravate the political situation by raising the issue of interrogations, which makes the government the main responsible for the continuing political crisis. However, the political observers hold the members of parliament and the government responsible for these recurrent crises, which provided a negative image of Kuwait’s pioneering democratic experience in the Arabian Gulf and tarnished the face of freedom and democracy in Kuwait. The situation has fostered an atmosphere of tension, conflict and chaos, which led to the faltering process of national action in the country. The Members of Parliament often create the crises on some secondary issues. For example, the insistence of some Islamist members of the parliament on questioning the Minister of Awqaf because the resolution to ban the sale of some religious books at an exhibition of books caused the crisis between the government and parliament in May 2007. The government was also forced to resign in November 2008 because of the insistence of members in the parliament to interrogate the Prime Minister when the authorities allowed an Iranian Shia cleric to enter Kuwait despite the existence of a legal ban on his entry.
The swirl of crises in Kuwait led to the freezing of the development process in the country and halted the launch of reforms and change in Kuwait and the Arab Gulf region. Kuwait, as mentioned by the international reports since the constitution in 1962, went through four real crises on democratic level, which led to the suspension of the constitution. The first took place in 1967 with the dissolution of parliament and the constitution was suspended during the period 1976 to 1980 and 1986 to 1992 and it led to security confrontations. The political rallies came out demanding the return of the constitution. During the unconstitutional dissolution of the parliament, the public liberties were subject to the restriction and censorship was imposed on the newspapers. Since the return of parliamentary in 1992, five councils have been elected and four of which ended with the constitutional resolution. The years 1999, 2006, 2008 and 2009 are considered as the years of political crises due to clashes between members of parliament and the current head of government, who formed seven governments since 2006 without accomplishing the real achievements on the ground. The new generation of young Kuwaitis started demanding an Emirate based constitution and elected government as well as the formation of political parties. In the beloved Gulf of Kuwait we all are waiting in the hope that Kuwait will come out of this crisis and return as a pioneer and leader in the Gulf society.
It is necessary to end the conflict with a real initiative from the top of the pyramid and the dispute between the government in Kuwait and parliament must come to an end.
The Gulf region is confused about the movement and change which it sees in Kuwait. The views expressed in a state of confusion vary in many cases. On the one hand there are demands by constitutional institutions, elected parliament, independent media and institutions of civil society as it is found in Kuwait and on the other hand they want a soft activity that walks with the convoy that does not get angry and struggle as well as neither held accountable nor questioned.
The last spark, which started from the growing crisis, was the march of thousands of demonstrators into the building of the Kuwaiti Parliament, in protest against what they described as assault of the security forces on a number of them to prevent them from reaching the home of the Prime Minister to demand his removal from the office and hold early parliamentary elections. This came after a number of Kuwaiti opposition MPs called and urged their supporters to come out in the street and sit in Iradah square opposite the parliament building to demand the resignation of the government, dissolve parliament and call early elections against the backdrop of what they described as government’s violations of some articles of the constitution because of its participation in the vote to cancel the investigations made against the president of Council of Ministers. The tension rose after nearly three months on the issue of corruption against the background of deposits of millions of riyals, suspicions of money laundering and its serious repercussions like bribery and external transfers of public money into the personal account of His Highness the Prime Minister. It is a matter in which a number of Members of Parliament are accused of receiving bribes from the Prime Minister and the same led the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs to resign. It is the scandal which is associated with the story of deputy and the cupboard of his mother. He is one of the parliamentarians who tried to take millions of Kuwaiti dinars into their bank accounts. The story says that a deputy wanted to take nearly four million Kuwaiti dinars (about fourteen and a half million dollars). The chief director of the bank contacted him to ask: How did you get this large amount? He answered: “I found it in my mother’s wardrobe!!” She, before her death, recommended me to construct a mosque in Kuwait and another outside Kuwait and after her death I searched her room, opened her wardrobe and found the amount!! The story, which spread throughout the Gulf says that a deputy went to withdraw some money from the ATM machine and the machine replied him saying that your balance is not sufficient to complete the transaction, please refer to “wardrobe of your mother!”
The anger at the mismanagement in Kuwait explodes in stages. I cannot say how often I heard the argument that emerged from the womb of the Kuwaiti society as there is grief and pain on the deterioration of the situation in a country which is a pioneer in political, economic, media, intellectual, artistic, academic, industrial and commercial fields. Nawaf Al Fezia points out that the last hospital in Kuwait was built in 1978 and the foundation of Jaber Hospital was laid before ten years. We are still waiting for the first hospital in Kuwait after 30 years. Al Fezia mentions that 10 years have passed from the days of skyrocketing oil prices and eight years have passed since the end of the danger of Saddam, but in 10 years, Dubai has become a global city from a small village and Qatar will host the Football World Cup, the most important world championship to be hosted for the first time in an Arab country which is the smallest Arab country by area. In 10 years the Grand Mosque has expanded twice and two Haj cities have been established in Saudi Arabia; even Bahrain, if the current unfortunate events didn’t take place, would have got the international attention for being the most important financial port in the region. In last ten years we have not seen a new airport or new planes or university or hospital in Kuwait.
But who bears the guilt in all these political and social tensions escalating in Kuwait, which is clearly defined after return and liberation from foreign invasion and it was supposed to get the opposite. The conflict is going on between two key streams in the home and the people of Kuwait are divided between this stream and the other. The first stream carries the members of the council who are called “shouting MPs”. They use the tools of parliamentary oversight in an arbitrary manner through the exaggeration in the presentation of interrogations of members of the government for reasons far from the public interest. They are deliberately restricting the government and exceeding the limits of their powers prescribed in the constitution as well as using undesirable language within the council in an unprecedented way. They intentionally direct interrogations to the members of the royal family in a way that suggests that they are challenging it. In addition to that they halted many development projects in Kuwait including the plan that was approved by the government worth five billion dollars aimed at countering the effects of current global financial crisis on the economy of Kuwait claiming that it was “devoid of transparency and objectivity”. They obstructed the march of democratic reforms as they refused to give Kuwaiti women their political rights and allow them to participate in the parliamentary elections as voters and candidates. This is the issue for which the government made strenuous efforts.
The other stream holds the government responsible for the recurrence of such political crises and stresses that the members of parliament do not exceed their authority when using the supervisory tools prescribed for them constitutionally, but the problem lies in the fact that the government does not accept the rules of the democratic game and it does not want to be questioned and held accountable. Whenever the members of the government are brought for interrogation they succeed in a vote of confidence as the leadership resorts to change the minister or change the government or dissolve the parliament and does not deal with these interrogations as a right guaranteed by the constitution to members of parliament. The leadership must reply to their interrogations or inquiries, as they argue that the interrogation of the prime minister is not a challenge to the ruling family, as long as the Kuwaiti Constitution gave the right expressly to members of the parliament to interrogate every authority of the government including the Prime Minister, who may be questioned, but he should not be allowed to cast the vote of confidence in it. The government is weak from the point of view of this stream and lacks a work programme. It is not serious in dealing with corruption and the completion of several strategic development projects and fears questioning. It seeks to aggravate the political situation by raising the issue of interrogations, which makes the government the main responsible for the continuing political crisis. However, the political observers hold the members of parliament and the government responsible for these recurrent crises, which provided a negative image of Kuwait’s pioneering democratic experience in the Arabian Gulf and tarnished the face of freedom and democracy in Kuwait. The situation has fostered an atmosphere of tension, conflict and chaos, which led to the faltering process of national action in the country. The Members of Parliament often create the crises on some secondary issues. For example, the insistence of some Islamist members of the parliament on questioning the Minister of Awqaf because the resolution to ban the sale of some religious books at an exhibition of books caused the crisis between the government and parliament in May 2007. The government was also forced to resign in November 2008 because of the insistence of members in the parliament to interrogate the Prime Minister when the authorities allowed an Iranian Shia cleric to enter Kuwait despite the existence of a legal ban on his entry.
The swirl of crises in Kuwait led to the freezing of the development process in the country and halted the launch of reforms and change in Kuwait and the Arab Gulf region. Kuwait, as mentioned by the international reports since the constitution in 1962, went through four real crises on democratic level, which led to the suspension of the constitution. The first took place in 1967 with the dissolution of parliament and the constitution was suspended during the period 1976 to 1980 and 1986 to 1992 and it led to security confrontations. The political rallies came out demanding the return of the constitution. During the unconstitutional dissolution of the parliament, the public liberties were subject to the restriction and censorship was imposed on the newspapers. Since the return of parliamentary in 1992, five councils have been elected and four of which ended with the constitutional resolution. The years 1999, 2006, 2008 and 2009 are considered as the years of political crises due to clashes between members of parliament and the current head of government, who formed seven governments since 2006 without accomplishing the real achievements on the ground. The new generation of young Kuwaitis started demanding an Emirate based constitution and elected government as well as the formation of political parties. In the beloved Gulf of Kuwait we all are waiting in the hope that Kuwait will come out of this crisis and return as a pioneer and leader in the Gulf society.
It is necessary to end the conflict with a real initiative from the top of the pyramid and the dispute between the government in Kuwait and parliament must come to an end.
