Islah, Sharia overwhelm the elections campaign in Kuwait

The election campaigns of political groups was launched in Kuwait in preparations for the parliamentary elections which will be held on July 5th.

The campaign concentrates on several main issues with the most important being the political reforms ( Islah) and imposing the Islamic Sharia.

Some 276 candidates are competing for 50 seats at the Kuwaiti parliament. In this regard conflict has been flared up between the liberals and the Islamists to win the seats of the parliaments through debated slogans concerning the positions of the two sides concerning al-Islah ( reform) issue.

While the liberals concentrate on the need to continue political reforms in the country, the Islamists call for achieving political, economic and administrative change through imposing the Islamic Sharia.

Among the prominent liberal candidate is the former minister Saad Bin Tifla al-Ajami, who was criticized by the Islamists over his liberal policy. In the beginning of his campaign, al-Ajamai described the mentality of the Islamists as "does not cope with the age and will be bypassed." The Islamists who repeatedly called for the implementation of the Islamic Sharia in Kuwait were not able to pass an amendment for the constitution so as to have the Islamic Sharia as the only source for legislation. They intend to spare no effort at the next parliament to that laws will not be at least contradictory to the Islamic Sharia.

However, the Islamic constitutional movement which is considered the main Islamic groups intends to propose amendment of the criminal law and the trade laws so as to be in compliance with the Sharia.

Islamists being from the constitutional movement (Muslim brothers) or from al-Salafeyah movement were careful to condemn the attacks hatched against the American forces in Kuwait. The Kuwaiti parliamentarian Muhammad al-Baseiri, one of the four candidates for the Islamic constitutional movement warned his liberal opponents who might exploit, according to his own allegations- the opposition of certain Islamists to the war against Iraq to distort the message of the political movement. He said that the "Islamic trend is a national trend which does not support terrorism." The spokesman for the al-Salafeyah movement Abdul Razzaq al-Shaeyji said that foreign factors will not have impact on the elections in Kuwait, noting that the elections will be based, basically on social relations because of the small number of voters in various circles, a number which does not exceed 3,000 in many of them.

Both the Muslim brothers and al-Salafeyah cling to their position in refusing to give the woman in Kuwaiti the right to be a candidate and to vote in elections. This, however, after four years of their alliance with the liberals in the parliament in November 1999 over rejecting a decree issued by the Amir Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah to this effect.