Kuwait’s 350,000 or so eligible voters — both men and women — go to the polls this Saturday, May 16, to elect a general assembly, just one year after the last parliamentary election. As before, this early election was called by Emir Shaikh Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah, in accordance with the country’s constitution, because the national assembly “could not cooperate” with the cabinet, most major ministries of which are held by members of the ruling family. Also as before, the immediate catalyst for this political maneuver was the assembly’s insistence on questioning one of those ministers over alleged financial irregularities — not some major policy difference, economic crisis, or ideological confrontation. And as before, the election will be held under essentially the same system that has produced at least three years of deadlock in Kuwaiti economic and social policymaking.
But this time, the election will be held under an implicit threat by Shaikh Sabah to suspend the assembly altogether if its freshly elected members — at least a third of whom are expected to be newcomers — once again prove unwilling to work together with the cabinet. In Kuwait, unlike any of the other Gulf Cooperation Council states, the elected parliament actually exercises effective control over the state budget. So an early test will probably come in June or July, when the new assembly may vote on an economic stabilization plan previously approved by the cabinet to guarantee half of $5 billion in bank loans to local businesses.
With this in mind, what should we look for as the election results arrive in this strategically positioned U.S. ally, neighboring Iraq across the Persian Gulf from Iran? Most commentators have focused on the contentious role of the Islamist bloc, which has lately won almost a third of the seats in the national assembly and often opposes the cabinet. Knowledgeable Kuwaitis, however, point to a shift in attitudes among an even larger segment of society: the tribal (or bedouin) sector, accounting for about half the country’s citizens, as opposed to the traditionally urban (or hadari) upper half of society.
In years past, the tribal sector could more often be relied upon to rally to the government’s position. More recently, however, socioeconomic grievances and a stronger populist strain have been moving this camp closer to the parliamentary opposition. With Kuwait’s liberal political voices in retreat over the past several elections, it is the tribal sector that will probably represent the swing vote in this election. The problem for forecasters is that personal and other idiosyncratic factors make the precise political behavior of this key constituency very difficult to predict.
Yet even if the new national assembly proves as nettlesome as its predecessors, Kuwait’s overall stability will hardly be threatened. This remains a very wealthy country, notwithstanding this year’s precipitous drop in oil prices back to $50 per barrel. Kuwait’s roughly 70 percent Sunni majority and 30 percent Shiite minority, unlike the case in most other places lately, are not antagonistic. Parliamentary politics, social conservatism, and a relatively free press all provide safety valves for the system, under the watchful eyes of a fairly efficient security service.
In the short run, therefore, the problem for Kuwait is more likely to be stagnation than instability. In the longer run, however, every iteration of this by-now familiar scenario of political paralysis makes the possibility of serious internal trouble just a little bit less remote.
Read this article on The Washington Institute for Near East Policy website.