Kuwaitis voted Tuesday to renew their parliament, in the seventh legislative elections since 2012 in this oil-rich Gulf state plagued by repeated political crises.
More than 793,000 voters were called upon to choose 50 deputies, after the invalidation of the September 2022 ballot.
Some 207 people, including 13 women, are in the running: in 20 years, never has a legislative election brought together so few candidates.
Authorities did not release the turnout, but the Kuwait Transparency Organization estimates it was nearly 50 percent an hour before the office closed at 10 p.m. (1900 GMT).
The results will be announced on Wednesday, according to the official Kuna news agency.
Fearing a strong abstention, the authorities had posted large banners in the streets of the capital to call on citizens to vote en masse.
Despite the climate of general weariness and overwhelming heat, Maasoumah Bousafar, 64, voted in the early hours.
“I came to fulfill my patriotic duty and I hope things will get better,” she told AFP.
Although the keys to power remain mainly in the hands of the ruling Al Sabah family, Kuwait enjoys an active political life and has an influential Parliament, unlike other monarchies in the region.
Elected officials have important prerogatives there, do not hesitate to demand accountability from ministers who are part of the royal family and who are accused of mismanagement, even corruption.
But this permanent showdown between the executive and the parliamentarians has resulted in a waltz of governments and the dissolution of the Assembly on numerous occasions over the past ten years.
In March, the Constitutional Court invalidated the 2022 legislative elections, ruling in favor of restoring the previous Parliament, which emerged from the 2020 ballot.
These two legislative elections had been won by the opposition, notably Islamist, who had boycotted the elections for ten years, to denounce the interference of the executive power in the electoral process.
In early April, the small monarchy formed its seventh government in three years. But, a few days later, the emir of Kuwait dissolved the Parliament and convened new legislative ones.
The 85-year-old Emir Nawaf al-Ahmad Al-Sabah usually stays away from political life in favor of the crown prince, Meshaal al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, himself 82 years old.
The 4.5 million inhabitants of this small country regularly complain about the deterioration of infrastructure and public services in the country.
“Many people in Kuwait feel they are being asked to participate in a political process that does them a disservice,” said Daniel L. Tavana, a Middle East election specialist.
“Kuwait is not doing well,” said Bader Al-Saif, a professor at the University of Kuwait, for whom the elections “are not the only solution”.
“The political system urgently needs innovation,” he said, denouncing “the absence of leadership in the Kuwaiti political class, whose actors vary little, whether in government or in parliament.”
The country, whose nearly 30% of GDP depends on the hydrocarbon sector, holds nearly 7% of the world’s crude oil reserves and is one of the world’s leading oil exporters.
But political instability has dampened investors’ appetite for Kuwait and hampered the reforms the country with its poorly diversified economy needs.
A situation that contrasts with that of its powerful neighbors in the Gulf, which are multiplying pharaonic projects.
06/06/2023 20:20:24 – Kuwait (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
