Search results

A Kuwait court has acquitted five online activists charged with insulting the emir, a verdict rights groups hope will help reverse the recent trend of political incarcerations. Muhammad Al-Ajmi, Faris Al-Balhan, Abdul-Aziz Al-Mutairi, Fahd Al-Jufaira and Rashid Al-Anzi were acquitted by the criminal court on 13 February.

In response to a Freedom of Information request, GSN has obtained the cost to the UK of running its embassies, consulates and diplomatic missions in the Gulf region. The following table shows the annual running cost of each mission in the financial year 2011/12, the last full financial year available. The figures include costs incurred by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) on behalf of all UK government departments present at these posts.

In another sign that the new parliament is keener than its predecessors to get down to business, Kuwaiti MPs have passed a draft law on Kuwait Airways that will finally allow the beleaguered airline’s long-awaited privatisation to move forwards. Plans for privatisation were approved in 2008, but repeatedly delayed by Kuwait’s strangulated political environment. The cabinet had another go in April 2012, but that got put on the back burner during yet another season of parliamentary dissolution and elections

Beneath the patina of Kuwaiti politics – the petty squabbles, the back-and-forth and, more recently, the occasional passing of laws – the government, opposition and new parliament are busy staking claims about their ability to represent Kuwaiti interests

The new parliament’s pro-government character appears to be translating into greater levels of achievement. The assembly has already pushed through a number of bills and motions, including approving the much delayed draft law to privatise Kuwait Airways Corporation.

On 8 January, after many delays, Kuwait awarded the contract for the Az-Zour North independent water and power project (IWPP) to the preferred bidder, a consortium of GDF Suez, Japan’s Sumitomo and Kuwait’s AH Sagar & Brothers Group. It was the first contract to be awarded since the Partnerships Technical Bureau (PTB) was established in 2008, raising hopes that the new parliament, for all its faults, may be more efficient in pushing through development plans.

Two more Kuwaitis have been sentenced to two years in prison for insulting the emir on Twitter. Newswires said Rashid Saleh Al-Anzi and Ayyad Al-Harbi, sentenced on 6 and 7 January respectively, were both expected to appeal.

Kuwait’s new government, announced on 11 December, contained no major surprises – most noteworthy was a return to the finance ministry for Mustafa Al-Shamali, who resigned after a parliamentary grilling in May 2012.

The Co-operation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC) was officially set up on 25 May 1981 in Abu Dhabi, when the leaders of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates agreed to set up a council whose aims were to “achieve unity”, formulate “similar regulations” in fields including economics, customs, commerce, communications, education and culture, and to stimulate scientific and technological progress.

The past year has been a political rollercoaster for Kuwait, and there has been little progress in dealing with the system’s underlying problems. The opposition won a parliamentary majority in February but, in June, the emir dissolved parliament on a technicality. Fresh elections were held on 1 December, but were boycotted by the opposition, angry that the emir decreed a change to the electoral law, cutting the number of votes to one per person, a move the opposition says favours pro-government candidates.

Bahrain hosted the 33rd summit of the Gulf Co-operation Council on 24 and 25 December, with the summit’s final statement, the Sakhir Declaration, reiterating a ‘commitment to implementing all the decisions of the supreme council on GCC integration in all areas’

Global Investment House (Global) shareholders approved a plan to delist the company from the Kuwait Stock Exchange at an extraordinary meeting on 2 December. The company wants to proceed with a significant restructuring, and had asked the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) to grant it an exemption from mandatory tender offer regulations that were standing in its way

Elsewhere in the region, the election of so many Shia candidates in Kuwait appears to have caused some jitters. The Gulf Daily News, considered a mouthpiece for the Bahraini government, ran a front page article on 3 December which claimed several newly elected Kuwait MPs had ‘terror links’.

Parliamentary elections on 1 December went ahead as planned, albeit with turnout at a historic low as a result of an opposition boycott. The new assembly looks likely to be more pro-government than the last, but opposition plans for further mass protests and the inexperience of almost two thirds of new MPs suggest the crisis is far from over.

List of candidates elected in 1 December 2012 parliamentary election. Source: Kuwait News Agency.