KUWAIT CITY: Kuwait’s parliament yesterday failed to approve a bill that would have allowed women to vote and stand for election in time for forthcoming municipal polls, its speaker said. “The voting has been deferred to the next session in two weeks,” Jassem Al Khorafi said after a heated three-hour debate by MPs over a legal deadlock following Monday’s vote that failed to reach a decision.
The postponement was requested by Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah just before a re-vote was due to take place, apparently after he felt the government did not have the required number to pass the bill.
The vote on the bill on Monday failed to achieve a quorum after 29 MPs backed the legislation, the same number abstained and two voted against.
Khorafi then declared the bill was in a “limbo” as it had been “neither accepted nor rejected.”
Islamist and tribal MPs fiercely opposed to enfranchising women protested that any debate on the bill should have been dropped altogether after it failed to achieve a quorum on Monday. But the speaker said parliament’s constitutional experts have come up with three opinions.
Sheikh Sabah said after the session he remained “absolutely confident that Kuwaiti women will get their rights” after two weeks.
The speaker said that a decree calling municipal elections would now be issued “within days”, meaning that “Kuwaiti women will not be able to take part” even if parliament votes later this month to give them the vote.
n Kuwait’s public prosecution yesterday interrogated a number of Islamist activists who founded the emirate’s first political party on charges of plotting to “overthrow the government”, the party said. “Members of the party were summoned to the public prosecution” for interrogation for establishing a political party, the Ummah (Nation) Party said in a statement.
“The charge has been upgraded from a misdemeanour for violating the publication and assembly laws to a felony for establishing a political party to overthrow the regime,” the statement said.                               – AFP
Last update on: 4-5-2005