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KUWAIT, June 30: Powerful Islamic and reformist candidates swept Kuwait’s elections but women failed to win a single seat in their first attempt to run for parliament, results showed on Friday.
Analysts and newspapers said a strong showing by the opposition — a loose coalition of pro-reform ex-MPs, Islamists, leftists and liberals — raises the possibility of deeper tension between the new assembly and the government.
Opposition candidates won two-thirds of the seats, state media said, but the new parliament will remain exclusively male.
“Women failed us,” said Zikra al-Majdali, a 39-year-old lawyer who ran in an ultra-conservative Islamist area, referring to hopes among female candidates that women — voting for the first time — would help elect at least one of them.
“Forty years of struggle by women was distilled into only a month to prepare (for polls),” candidate Aisha al-Rushaid told Reuters. “It was a good experience we learnt from, but circumstances were not aligned in favour of women.”
NO SURPRISES: None of the 28 women among a total of 249 candidates won a seat even though women make up 57 per cent of the Gulf Arab state’s 340,000 eligible voters.
“The outcome was not unexpected but there’s a feeling of some sorrow,” said Majdali. “Good luck to the men who won; I hope all those promises to tackle women’s issues don’t turn out to be just slogans.”
Women won the right to run for office and to vote in May 2005. Overall turnout was heavy at 65 per cent but only 35 per cent for women, state media said.
Other female candidates took the defeat in their stride.
“Oh yes, I will run again ... (women) were very supportive, and Kuwait deserves that we continue,” said candidate Rola Dashti, 42, echoing views from others.
Results carried by state media showed the opposition, united mostly by a stand against what they called government-sponsored corruption, won two-thirds of the seats.
Twenty out of 29 reformist ex-MPs who formed the nucleus of the opposition alliance were re-elected to the 50-member house.
They were joined in the National Assembly by at least 11 new members, including prominent figures in opposition circles, new Islamists and young liberals with anti-corruption platforms.
The Islamists, who had a 15-man bloc in the previous house and led the opposition, won the same number of seats if not more, with one newspaper saying a total of 18 Islamists won.—Reuters
