Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn't (Stanford Briefs) by Matthiesen Toby

Author:Matthiesen, Toby [Matthiesen, Toby]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2013-07-03T00:00:00+00:00

Protest on Irada Square in front of the National Assembly, the Kuwaiti parliament, Kuwait City, on November 21, 2011. Photo by a local photographer who wishes to remain anonymous.

So over the past few years youths have become a powerful force in Kuwaiti politics that has undermined some established political groupings while making alliances with others. Key activists, for example, stem from the youth branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, while many are members of some powerful tribes.32 In early 2011, a number of youth activists established a political group for youths, the Civil Democratic Movement, which calls for a constitutional monarchy.33

Protests gained pace throughout 2011, and things came to a head in November 2011 when youth activists stormed the Kuwaiti parliament in a protest against the government. This led a few days later to the resignation of the Kuwaiti prime minister Nasser al-Muhammad al-Sabah. The context for the storming of the assembly had been allegations of wide-scale corruption and vote buying by the prime minister, and in the months that followed more details about large payments from the prime minister to a range of MPs surfaced in the Kuwaiti press.34 After this success, the demands of the youth movement were taken on by the established opposition groups, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood and a number of independent politicians, who started calling for an elected prime minister, the legalization of political parties, and a full constitutional monarchy.35

Jabir al-Mubarak al-Sabah, a former minister of defense and first deputy prime minister, was appointed as the new prime minister. The aforementioned newly elected February 2012 parliament moved ahead on the corruption investigations, but according to one member of the “majority bloc,” a “nasty plot” led to the dissolution of the parliament. In June, after just 120 days, the constitutional court declared the elections invalid, thereby dissolving the opposition-dominated parliament.36 In response, tens of thousands participated in a rally that was held at Irada Square (the Square of “Popular” Will) in front of the National Assembly, the Kuwaiti parliament. Irada Square had become a symbol of the protest movement, not unlike Tahrir Square in Cairo or the Pearl Roundabout in Manama, with a speaker’s corner, tents, and large carpets to sit on, and at times daily gatherings.37

Kuwait’s parliament—the most powerful in the Arab Gulf countries—and its relatively free media and tradition of political debate, above all in the diwaniyyas, distinguishes it from the other members of the GCC. Following a bargain between the wealthy merchant families and the al-Sabah ruling family, the amir granted Kuwait a parliament and a constitution in 1962, a year after the State of Kuwait was established and the British Protectorate over Kuwait ended. The amir, however, retains the right to dissolve parliament and has suspended it twice in 1976 and 1986.38 Only the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein in 1990 proved to be a game changer. After the country was liberated from Iraqi occupation in the First Gulf War, the exiled Kuwaiti ruling family reached a deal with the opposition that turned Kuwait into a liberalized autocracy and the most progressive political system in the GCC.

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