Kuwaitis prepare to elect new parliament

Kuwaitis will head for balloting boxes on July 5th to choose the parliamentarians of the new parliament ( Ummah council), amid tremendous changes taking place in the region and hopes that these elections will be conducive to making fundamental changes inside the state establishments.

Some 136,000 Kuwaitis eligible to vote -- from a total Kuwaiti population of 885,000 -- will vote for 50 Parliamentarians ( except members of the government with most of them are appointed from outside the parliament) out of 276 candidates for the new Kuwaiti nation council. The Kuwaiti women have no right to vote or nominate themselves for a parliamentary seat.

The political analysist Shafiq al-Ghabra said that there are regional changes affecting the Kuwaiti voters including the toppling of the Iraqi regime and the Middle East peace process developments and reforms in certain Arab states.

He added that these changes push voters to work for making necessary political reforms to cope with what is taking place in the world, stressing that several voters concentrate in their media campaign on regional issues, to the same extent others concentrate on internal issues.

He indicated that the elections might not achieve optimum changes especially at the level of the parliament, and the ball will be in the court of the government in order to proceed forward in this regard.

The recent survey held by the Kuwaiti daily al-Qabas said that a large portion of the voters will vote for political reforms. It said that 63% of those registerd to vote will vote while 21 % will refrain from voting. The others are undecided.

Worthy mentioning that the Sunni Islamists occupy 21 seats in the current parliament, while the Shiite Islamists occupy four seats and the liberals 7 seats. The remaining seats are distributed among representatives of local tribes, independents and pro-government candidates.