Finale Blog: Unfinished Business

The Asian Times notes that India is now in the third round month long, five round monthly parliamentary process. This election will decide whether Sonia Ghandi of the ruling Congress party will maintain control or whether the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with Lal Krishna Advani among other candidates will take over the government. While Ghandi is a strong candidate, the Hindu nationalist BJP is a strong as well. This third set of voting involves 107 constituencies across eleven states and two union territories and they will vote for 26 seats in Gujarat (a BJP stronghold), 16 in Madya Pradesh, 15 in Uttar Pradesh, 14 in West Bengal and 11. This is also when the new 32-member legislature in the northeastern part of India’s border state of Skikkim will be selected. When this is over, 372 of the 543 seats that have to be voted on for the Lower House will have been decided. While the election can still go either way, India’s heat (at 43 degrees Celsius or above) and a general lack of concern from the political class have caused a reduction in voter turnout. It have only 55% in the first two phases although Andhra Pradesh had a record turnout at 68% and it may be the state that determines the next ruler of India. Orissa was only a bit lowers at 62%. However, Uttar Pradesh (a stronghold of Gandhi) had a small turnout with only 40% which is problematic for Gandhi. While generally, the economically weaker parties vote more, while the rich vote at pathetic levels like 40% or less, the middle and upper classes around urban areas have voted at about 58%. This is exactly the opposite of Western nations. All the attention is really on May 16th at this point which is when the poll results from the finally two rounds of voting come in. Atill, a single-party government seems unlikely since BJP and Congress (the ruling party) are unlikely to gain the proper amount of votes. Many small parties will pay a part in forming the government, More interestingly, these coalitions will form after the elections which leads to more uncertainty. This also increases the chance of a Third Front which is an alliance of non Congress or BJP parties.

Another article discusses both the elections in Lebanon from a more Middle Eastern/Arab perspective. It notes that in the Middle East there are both real free elections (like in Iraq now) and fake elections (like Iraq under Saddam). While the majority fall under the later type of elections, the former are happening some in the Middle East and those have domestic and regional implications. A case and point are the Palestinian elections where Hamas took over which was meet by a negative reaction from the US, Israel and Egypt. In June, there will be two more Middle Eastern elections that are generally speaking free: Lebanon on June 7 and Iran on June 12. Lebanon has two major political coalitions which could be called the March 8th and March 14th coalitions. The March 8th Alliance is named after a rally in Beirut the Hezbollah organized and consist of Hezbollah, Nabih Berri’s Amal party, and the secular Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) of General Michel Aoun. Berri is a Shia Muslims and Aoun is a Maronite Christian and so Berri draws Shia Muslims and Aoun draws support from this and other Christian constituencies. The March 14 Alliance is also named after an anti-Syrian demonstration in Beirut and happened a month after Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri’s assignation and led to Syrian troops being removed from Lebanon after 29 years. March 14 is the Western-backed and ruling coalition and consist of Sunni, Druze, and Christian parties led by Saad Hariri, billionaire son of Rafiq, whose Future Movement make up its largest bloc. These two groups have a tense and opposing relationship to a point that the government was once shut down by they came to an agreement and elected consensus nominee Michel Suleiman as president. To understand Lebanon’s elections requires a understanding of how it’s parliament is structured. It’s Chamber of Deputies (America’s Congress) consist of 128 seats divided equally between Christians and Muslims and then divided again by the 18 recognized religious sects in the county. This is not based on recent demographic information since Lebanon’s last census was in 1932. Currently, in their Congress the March 14 Alliance holds 70 seats and March 8, 58. Since the Shia candidates all belong to the March 8th alliance and the Sunni candidates belong to March 14 alliance, this is not where the balance of power will change. Instead it depends on how the Christians vote. Whether they back Aoun’s FPM or to Christian parties affiliated with March 14. Most analysts say only 30 seats are actually toss-ups and March 8 needs to only win seven to gain a majority. The article states that Hassan Nasrallah seems willing to build a coalition to rule Lebanon but that Hariri does not agree if March 14 does not win. It then notes that Sec. of State Clinton came to Beirut and threatens a reduction in aid if March 8 wins and that Israel is doing military exercises to scare the Lebanese. Still, the article argues that this election may show that lose in influence of those in the Middle East who are US supporters and that on June 7th Lebanon has a chance to show the Arab world that if “little Lebanon” can split from the US backed alliance, so can they.

Another article looks at the role of personal freedom in the Iranian elections coming up. In Iran, they still have control over personal appearance, clothing and hairstyle. Iran believes in “collective morality” and thus the country has been working to enforce Islamic modesty by preventing un-Islamic conduct like western clothing. Presidential candidate Mir Hussein Mousavi, a former prime minster and possibly the strongest of the reformist candidates, has said he will end these restrictions and this seems like a savvy political promise. After all, 70% of the population is under 30 but there are questions about whether he is sincere and if he can achieve these goals. Since 1997, social freedom has been a big issue in the Iranian elections and Mohammad Khatami’s promises of social freedom to the youth led to his landslide victories by getting voters who normally do not care about political to become invested. While he keeps his promise in some ways with some increases in freedoms, the morality police also stayed in power. When the issue came up in 2005, even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (who we now consider a hardliner) spoke positively of greater personal freedom. In reality, the crackdown on "un-Islamic" behavior increased under Ahmadinejad and his government did little more than blame others for this increase. The truth is that it sees that presidents have limited power in regards to the morality police. This is mainly because Iran has many centers of power and unless they agree, the morality police will stay. Still, this pledge is political popular and most candidates play lip service to it. The issue is that the youth may not trust candidates like Mousavi when he says he cares about their freedoms. He claims to have both reformists and hardliners support but he has to win to do anything and the young may be too cynical to trust him with their votes.

Iran, India and Lebanon

A New York Times Op-ed looks at the issues surrounding the elections in Iran. It notes that there has been an Iranian-American journalist jailed and makes the point that this is likely related to the elections. Also, this column notes that the conservative party in Iran is fractured and that Ahmadinejad has been unable to the deal with domestic policy in that country and that he faces both external opposition (from countries like the United States) and internal opposition (in his election and from some elites). The reformist actually look like they have a decent chance of unseating the conservatives in Iran and Iran has been isolated because of it’s rhetoric. The elites among the conservatives are feuding with one another with pragmatic conservatives and hard-liner conservatives fighting, particularly pragmatic conservatives trying to undermine Ahmadinejad. While Iran’s presidential elections are not until June 12, as has been mentioned before, they are having effects on the things going on now. The reformist have two different candidates they are vying for president: Mir Hossein Mousavi, a popular 1980s prime minister and Mahdi Karroubi the former speaker of Iran’s Parliament. Conservatives are split between the pragmatist who want to pick a moderate candidate and who support détente with Obama and the hard-liners who want to continue supporting Ahmadinejad and who distrust Obama and do not want to negotiate with him in any way. Those who support Ahmadinejad include the intelligence apparatus, some of the Revolutionary Guard, and hard-line clerics (like Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi) and their followers. The Op-ed columnist argues that Iran’s hard-liners are afraid of talking to the US because they are that relations with strength reformist and democratic groups in Iran and that could led to a velvet revolution. Also, he argues they fear that improved relations mean a removal of sanctions which would break up some of the economic power they have and also expose the corruption they have been a part of.

Forbes is also looking at the elections coming up in India. They note that it is possible that the small caste-based and regional parties will be successful at winning seats over the two larger parties the Congress Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leading to no party having a clear majority and post-election negotiations will have to be done to determine who is in control of India. The opinion polls seem to suggest that the two major parties will win about 200 seats each with third parties winning about 150 seats so that nobody has the required 272 out of 573 seats. In 1996, the leader of the BJP Atal Behari Vajpayee became prime minister but was ultimately unable to build a winning coalition and so resigned. Then the third parties joined into a Third Front and before failing had two prime ministers. Either of which seems like it is possible in this situations. The party with the most seats gets the first chance to form a government but it will have trouble forming a government since it is possible their allies on the Left Front (a group of four Marxist parties) will not join them because of their nuclear deal with the US last session. Without them, they might need to depend on Mayawati of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) who leads the dalits (a group who consist of the bottom of India's caste ladder). If the BJP gains power it is likely that they will need the Mayawati in order to maintain power as well. However, Mayawati has stated that the price of her support is gaining the position of Prime Minister. This may led to a rotating Prime Ministership. Still, the coalition government, while though to possible cause bad economic policy has not done so in the past and in fact have produce important economic reforms. Since this is the case, India will likely continue on its same path of careful liberalization. Also, until the recession is over, economic liberalism of finance and retail will not go far but after the recession there should be a movement in that direction. Still, there are two problems that author notes. The first is that all the parties are promising large amounts of spending and this could be bad for the country economically. Second, Mayawait wants a job quota for dalits and tribals in the private sector (they already exist in the public sector) and she may get it in order for other parties to get her support. They could hurt India’s competitiveness. Finally, there could be increases in wealth and capital gains taxes if the Left Front dominates a third party government. This article argues the best case is a stable BJP government as they are liberalizers and support outright privatization and the worst case a government led by third party groups with the Left Front at the top and Mayawati’s job quotas. This article looks at India from a liberal perspective with its focus on leaders (though that’s all elections coverage really) and it’s concern with the economic prospects of the election, implicitly showing it to be an area of significant concern.

The Washington Times reports that another country with elections coming up is Lebanon. What is more, Hezbollah is working to build support and has a good chance of winning the elections there. They are working on putting a more moderate face. This could be problematic of the US since Lebanon is a pro-US country and if Hezbollah won, a very anti-US group (and Iranian and Syrian proxy) would have control of Lebanon. Hezbollah is considered a terrorist group by both the United States and Israel. Hezbollah has tried to make the case that they would not be a radical change if they won. Their leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, has stated they will work with opponents and build a national unity government to make sure the country continues to be stable. They have talked about things like dealing with government corruption, making government more efficient and and government by consensus. Also, Britain has said it is willing to talk to the political wing of Hezbollah. Hezbollah is being careful because it does not want the same fate as it’s militant ally Hamas that won election but was then crippled by Western boycotts and Israeli actions. Still a Hezbollah win means at the least less pressure on Hezbollah and it’s ability to use rocket attacks on Israel, attempts to solidify Shiite power and the possibility of adding Lebanon to the Iran and Syria block. Lebanon is has a highly sectarian system a 128-member legislature that has to be half-Christian and half-Muslim. Then Christians are divided among Orthodox and Catholic parties and Muslims among Shi'ite, Sunni, Druse and Alawite sects. Also, in any of the governments, the prime minister must be a Sunni, so Hezbollah would needs there help. All Hezbollah’s candidates will likely win and it’s coalition that consist of pro-Syrian, Shiite and Christian parties currently has 58 seats. A win by this coalition would likely see a end to the sectarian distribution of parliamentary seats and a mandate for opposition to the US’s Middle East policy and strong opposition to Israel.

Back to Elections!

In the, Globe and Mail, one of the candidates for parliament discusses the elections currently going on it India. On the theme of elections, the world’s largest democracy, India, is having its elections. They are electing a new national parliament and have gone through this process fourteen times since getting their independence. The electorate includes a whopping 714 million voters with votes cast in 828,804 polling stations. There are more that 5,000 candidates from seven national political parties and the process involves four million electoral officials and 6.1 million police and civilian personnel. In other words, it’s massive process. So massive that it will happen over 5 stages and starting in mid-April, will not end until May 16th. Also, since a large amount of the population is illiterate, there are party symbols so that voters can vote according to that. Their elections are free of violence, honest, and they use electronic voting so there is not an option of stuffing the ballot box. This is a part of what makes India unique in that there are few developing countries with strong democracies. It is even more rare considering that there is still large amounts of poverty and illiteracy.

This article likely has some bias considering that it is a candidate running for the elections in India. For my next blog I intend to focus more on this election. It will be going on for a while so there should be a lot to talk about and to focus on. Still, it is interesting just to think about the fact that India is the world’s largest democracy. This is something that people just do not think about. It makes me wonder if it is possible to learn something from how their system works because our huge population has made elections somewhat difficult recently. One particular thing of interest is that they are using electronic voting. That has become a problem in the US and I do not know if the Indians have come up with a better solution there or if they have just not run into problems yet because it’s new there. That is something that I will continue to look out for. I also hope to find out more about the political environment as I follow these elections.

The American Prospect reports that Benjamin Netanyahu has returned to power and created a coalition. However, it questions whether he is actually in charge of the coalition that he has created or not. They argue that Netanyahu has a coalition of people that are not up to the job of dealing with Israel’s crisis and that Netanyahu in particular is not a strong deal maker. He built his coalition with five other parties besides his own Likud party and shut out the centrist Kadima party that won more votes in the Knesset than his party did. He got the other groups in with various favors and gifts. For instance, he gave the ultra-Orthodox Shas party a system of state subsidies that had ironically enough been removed by him, gives funding to Orthodox schools, and lets the Shas party be in charge of the Housing Ministry. Avigdor Lieberman received the job of foreign minister and control over judicial and law enforcement post. To get Labor, he gave half the members of Labor in the Knesset cabinet positions and let Ehud Barak stay on as defense minister. This left him with very few cabinet positions for his own party so he had to split cabinet position to reward his own Likud party and has quite a few ministers with no portfolio. Also, Lieberman made the point that Israel was not required to continue the talks they had started with the Palestines but Netanyahu release a press statement soon after saying he supported Obama’s quest for peace in regards to the Israelis and Palestinians. The American Prospect ultimately makes the argument that on this and many other issues, Netanyahu will zig and zag on various different issues in an attempt to try and consolidate power as opposed to an attempt to act on his principles. They note that he is a hardliner and that is part of the reason for his hard-right conservative parliament but that he is easily deterred from his views.

The Israeli elections have continued to be rather interesting to follow. However, since the cabinet is picked, it seems that I will probably move away from talking about Israel. One thing of comment is that this article seems to have a left-wing bias. If I’m not mistaken the American Prospect is left-leaning. They are very critical of Netanyahu but what seems interesting to me is that they seem to criticize his willingness to compromise and usually that is considered a good trait. Regardless, this is a much more right-wing government so it will be interesting to see how it works with the US and other countries and how the Middle East peace process is affected by what is going on.

A Stratfor Intelligence report discusses Iranian influence in Iraq as well as the effects of elections in Iran around the issue. The Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani has met with the most powerful Shiite religious leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and the Iranian Assembly of Experts Chairman Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani led a delegation to meet with Al-Sistani and other political Iraqi officials including the president earlier this month. Both men are powerful figures in Iranian politics, members of the pragmatic conservative wing and both have issues with the current president Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Also, interestingly, al-Sistani was willing to host both men but refused to host Ahmadinehjad. While the election in Iran is between hardliners like Ahmadinejad and reformers like Mir Hossein Mousavi, it is important to note that the person who is actually in charge is Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In some ways, the election in Iraq is more important because of this simple fact. Iran’s plan was to unifiy Shiite power in Iraq and use it to expand their influence. They wanted to do this either by creating a federal Shiite zone in Iraq’s oil-rich south to give Iran influence in Shiite political factions in Iraq and give them a link to the oil revenue. Their main method was to use the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), an allied Iraqi faction led by Abdel Aziz al-Hakim who has pushed this idea. However, they did poorly in the January elections with Shiite parties less connected to Iran doing fact better. In retrospect, the ISCI’s “close affiliation with Iran, use of religious symbols in campaigning, false claims of al-Sistani's backing and the push for the creation of a Shiite federal zone in southern Iraq “ hurt it badly in the election. This is a problem for Iran in that it shows they are having less influence on Iraqi politics than they want. Now Iran is trying to gain support in various Shiite groups and work to have their political allies in Shiite groups, as well as Sunni and Kurdish groups, to unseat Prime Minister Al-Maliki but that will take a large amount of effort as well. The 2003 Iraq War has created an opening for Iran to try and spread it’s influence but the Turks, Americans and other Arab powers are filling in the gap so far. Things may change with the reduced US presence but it seems that for now this will be a difficult task for Iran.

Model UN Recap

Doing the Model UN simulation was an interesting and powerful experience in many ways. For me it was different from many of the people in the class because I was the chair of the committee and got to see how the process worked from behind the scenes as well as see the prep work that was a part of our class and see how the process worked in the room itself. One of the first things that really stuck out to me was how hard it was to take off our Western, perhaps softer approaches to dealing with political issues. While I complimented the group on thinking very much like the Kuwaiti government in regards to balancing the competing demands to be more Western and the public’s strong opposition (and I hold to that) we were still very nice. A example that stands out to me was the very first crisis we had. The crisis had us deal with the fact that the parliament had threaten to remove the Prime Minister unless we gave in to their demands. We made a deal with them in order to get them to stop and change course. Now, it just so happens that this story pretty much happened in the real world. There were not explicit terms given but other than that it was the same. The response of the Emir was to dissolve the parliament and blame them for the crisis. I’m not going to get into whether he was right or wrong. It’s just interested that we handled the situation so differently. The idea of the simulation was to give people the freedom to act and decide but not let them do anything crazy or extremely unrealistic. I felt our response was in the mainstream so I allowed it but I could not help but notice our actions were affected by what we thought was fair and from a Western point of view.

There were also quite a few “real world” things that happened that would not have been expected and were not planned but in some ways made the simulation better to me. For example, the news messed up a story having Israel threaten us with military violence one time and made it sound like we wanted Syria to have Jerusalem in another case. In each situation, we had to do quick diplomatic work to make sure the matter did not get out of hand. Doing this is something that countries really have to deal with. Sometimes miscommunications occur and countries have to meet and deal with them. Sometimes the news blatantly mischaracterizes your position. That’s something that has to be dealt with in the real world. So in some ways, I think the simulation did good to have us deal with those kinds of things despite the fact that it was quite frustrating. It was surprising in some ways how difficult it was to make decisions. We debated for quite a while on a way to deal with the labor strike that we received. Eventually we had to vote on a few issues to come up with a firm decision on what to do. Again, that is what happens in real life (either that or those with the biggest guns win) and so it was a valuable part of the simulations.

Talking about the simulation just for itself there were some good things about it and some really bad things. I think it did give a somewhat accurate portrayal of the pace of issues that must be dealt with when crisis really picked up. Sometimes there were lull moments and those were used to deal with domestic issues but as soon as an international crisis occurred we put it down. The crisis that we received were very good and led to in-depth conversation that later led us to coming up with one of the domestic issues we discussed and tried to deal with. Besides that, the way that we dealt with other countries felt very real. We were reacting to news as it happened and looked through headlines of stories to see what if we should act in the situation or just let it go. Also, the diplomatic meetings seemed to go well. In many ways they were the most exciting part with people anxious to hear the reports of the diplomats who had gone down to talk with another country. I liked that we had China in this simulation though I feel there is more that could have been done to really flesh out their role in the region. It was difficult to figure out what they wanted which could be for a number of reasons including they were played by people from ECU who were not trained by people as close to the Model UN group.

My major complaint would be that we did not have enough crisis (we didn’t have any) for the second day. This made the day really seem unbearable. There was very little to do at the beginning until other countries were doing things and so people got bored and stopped paying attention. That made it really hard to keep people’s attention when things did start to happen. That said, even when they did pick up, it was more Kuwait inserting itself into situations that them dealing with Kuwait. This is in some parts, because Kuwait is a small country and so there are few issues that really affect Kuwait or many major players that care about it. Still, it made the simulation less rewarding for those of us who were Kuwait. I really had run out of domestic concerns to give the group that they could deal with by the second day so that left me with very little to do to deal with their boredom. I know in many ways that it because of news but it was a problem and it did make it a less rewarding experience overall.

Still, it is without a doubt something that I would do again. It was a rewarding and fun experience that gave a lot of power to those who participated. I tried to not force my will on the group, (though I probably failed there on the second day close to the end) so I did not get to experience that and did not spend large amounts of time trying to get my particular will. That is one thing that I do regret from having a Chair role. It forced me to hold back and not get to play as active of a role in the actual doing. I would like to have had a chance to actually be one of the people trying to push an agenda. If I were in the Model UN class-club for another semester I would have that chance. As is, I’ll get to do it a bit but as a Security Council member. Because of that I can’t speak on that element. Still it was worth it to be able to talk to others and help them to have an enjoyable experience with their first exploration of a Model UN simulation. I hope that we continue to do things like this because this has been one of the more interesting and meaningful parts of the class and gave us a chance to try and put some of what we had learned into actual practice.

Politics in Kuwait

Like every country, Kuwait has many major political issues that must be dealt with in the country. First to discussion the political structure of Kuwait is a constitutional monarchy with the head of the government being the Emir. The Emir then appoints a Prime Minister, a council of ministers (the equivalent of the United States Cabinet) who help the Prime Minister govern. The Council of Ministers must contain at least one elected member from the Kuwaiti parliament, known as Majlis Al-Umma or National Assembly. The National Assembly can dismiss the Prime Minister or any council minister constitutionally which makes them answerable to the National Assembly. The National Assembly has fifty elected members who are picked in elections that are held every four years. There are now 5 district and people get 5 votes and the top ten vote winners get elected. There are a number of political factions in Kuwait although political parties are not allowed. The majors ones are the Islamic bloc, The Shaai (Populist) bloc, the liberal bloc and independents. The Islamic bloc is mainly Salafi and Hadas members and is the most influential bloc with its 21 members. They want the return of Shari'a law and have supported bills like the elimination of co-education at the university level. The Shaabi bloc has nine seats and focuses on lower and middle class issues. The liberal bloc has seven members and support things like women’s suffrage. There are 16 independents and they are basically pro-government types.

Government ministers also get votes in parliament. The Constitution of Kuwait, allows for nomination of a new Emir or Crown Prince by the ruling Al-Sabah family who has to be approved by the National Assembly. The royal family must submit the name of someone who the National Assembly approves of. Also, amendments to the constitution can be proposed by the Emir but need the approval of two-thirds of the members of the National Assembly before they take effect. Occasionally, there have been conflicts between the National Assembly and the Emir and the National Assembly has been dissolved. This has been done four time: from 1976 to 1981, from 1986 to 1991 and from May 1999 to July 1999 and from March 2008 to May 2008. The last two were legal with the Assembly being reelected quickly and the first two were not. The second dissolving was done because the Kuwaitis wanted to reduce the districts.

Interestingly, two-thirds of the Kuwait's population do not have citizenship and they only gave the vote to women in 2006. In 2005, only 15% of the population could which raised the amount of people who could vote to about 30% of the population. Now Kuwaiti citizens can vote though this still leaves out a large amount of the population as it can be seen.

Kuwait has good foreign relations with most of the countries around it and because of its oil wealth has a large say in OPEC. Kuwait has strong relationships with the countries that helped in when it was invaded by Iraq like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Syria, the United States and other East Asian and European state. It’s relation with states that backed Iraq like Jordan, Sudan, Yemen, and Cuba are strained or nonexistent. It’s foreign policy is focused on it’s oil and natural gas as it’s other resources are not enough to sustain it. It is also a strong supporter of the US and it’s war in Iraq. It’s relations with Iran are good with it supporting them against the West but bad with both Israel (being opposed to the attacks in Gaza) and Yemen. They have good relations with Greece but not Denmark because of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy. It has strong trade relations with India and China.

In regards to human rights, the situation in Kuwait is mixed. The United States Department of State labeled Kuwait among the worst human trafficking offenders in 2007 because it has not worked to tackle this problem and the National Assembly passed a law unanimously that restricted women from working between 8pm and 7am except women in medical professions and that do not allow women to be in environments that “contravene with public morals” or put women in all-male environments. The press in Kuwait ranks 85th in freedom of the press but is the most free in the Middle East despite the self-censorship of local and foreign press on subjects that are implicitly taboo.

In Kuwait as in other countries there are some major political issues in the country. They are Education, Foreign workers, election reform, women’s rights, individual rights (gun-control and cross-dressing), Islamic Law, banking and finance, the Shia minority, Corruption and the Oil industry.

In regards to education, there is an issue of allowing the government to pay half of Kuwaiti’s tuition at private schools. There is also a proposal to have the mandatory retirement age of teachers of 65 be pushed back to 70. Also, the Kuwaiti cabinet is removing parts of Islamic history that show Islamic extremism or intolerance and over a ban on co-education in universities.

In regards to foreign workers, there are issues such are getting rid of Kuwait’s Foreign worker sponsorship system that requires expatriates to be sponsored by local workers in order to get a permit. Also, there is a law drafted to give citizenship to bidun (or stateless) people in the country as long as they do not have a criminal record. It is the equivalent of immigration reform. There are debates over raising the minimum wage in Kuwait, issues over dealing with human trafficking and a proposal to create a blacklist for employers who mistreat their domestic helpers. In regards to elections reform, there are debates over the recent reducing of districts from 25 to 5 and also a discussion about supporting the legitimacy of the political parties.

In regards to women’s rights, women’s sufferage, allowing women in the army and police force, the 8pm work curfew for women mentioned earlier. There was also a ban on women playing soccer that passed but it has been lifted in 2008.

In regards to individual rights, gun control and cross-dressing are big issues. After some attacks by Al-Qaeda, the parliament allowed the police to search and seize illegal weapons. A similar law was passed in 1992 but was not extended in 1994 as gun control was seen as an individual right. A bill outlawing dressing as the opposite sex was passed in December 2007 and criticized by the Human Rights Watch.

As far as Islamic law, a bill was presented to amend the state’s penal code to meet Islamic sharia law. The Education Minister Nouriya Al-Subaih has been critizcized for not wearing the hijab. The government has also been criticized for giving Christians plots of law to build churches on saying it is illegal under Islamic law. Also, Waleed Al-Tabtabaie was able to pressure the Islamic Affairs ministry to issue a fatwa banning "un-Islamic" concerts which include concerts with women singing to men, mixing between sexes where women revel body parts, vulgar words and dancing.

Also, Kuwait is having an economic crisis as well and has had a stock market bailout. This move have been criticized by Al-Qallaf. Also, a bill to bailout debtors has been rejected by the parliament of Kuwait. Also, a bill to guaranteed bank deposits has been passed and a general concern about Kuwaiti assets.
The are also issues involving the Shia minority like their churches being attacked, opposition to a Ramadan soap opera that criticizes Shia’s temporary marriage arrangement and a law that requires all Kuwaiti public and shareholding companies pay Zakat (alms to the poor, an Islamic tradition).

There are also issues of corruption in like the Kuwait Airways’s scandal were this company was headed by a member of the ruling family and was accused to wasting public funds. Also, several falcon shipments may have been imported for influential people without the proper testing. Falcons were banned because of concerns with the bird flu but that ban has been eased. Also FIFA has suspended Kuwait from international matches because of governmental interference with the national football program.

There is also tension between the Parliament and the Royal Family with parliament being dissolved just last March and calling for the grilling of Prime Minister Nasser Mohammed Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah for letting a prominent Iranian Shiite cleric Mohammed al-Fali to enter Kuwait despite a legal ban. Many times, grilling can lead to a minister being called to resign and then being removed from office by Parliament.

Finally Oil is a big issue with Project Kuwait, a program to increase the country’s oil production with the help of foreign international companies. It has been argued this is against the Constitution.

All About Kuwait

Kuwait is a small Middle East Country (slightly smaller than New Jersey) that borders the Persian Gulf and lies between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. It has a climate of hot summers and short cool winters. It has four major natural resources which are petroleum, fish, shrimp, and natural gas. Major environment hazards in Kuwait are sudden cloudbursts from October to April that bring heavy rain that is strong enough to damage roads and houses and sandstorms and dust storms which occur mostly between March and August. They are dealing with issues of limited natural fresh water resources with some of the world's largest and most sophisticated desalination facilities providing much of their water as well as air and water pollution and desertification.

The history of Kuwait starts in 1613 when tribe in central Arabia settled the area. The tribe is known as the Bani Khalid Tribe and Kuwait became a major center for spice trading between India and Europe. By the late 18th-century, selling pearls became an important way to make a living and in 1756, the people elected Sabah I bin Jaber as the first emir of Kuwait. The ruling family in Kuwait now are descendents of Sabah I. During his rule, they became a center of trade and commerce. For a long time they also had a strong pearl industry and fleet until it was overtaken by Japan. Later, when the Ottoman Empire gained more influence in the region, Kuwait was given caza (district) status by the Ottomans. At this time Mubarak Al-Sabah was both recognized by the Ottomans and the British as ruler of this area. Britain oversaw foreign relations and defense for Kuwait from 1899 until Kuwait’s independent in 1961. Later, Kuwait’s border with Saudi Arabia was clarified with the 1922 Treaty of Uqair. Oil was discovered in the 1930s and Kuwait gained influence but after the Ottoman Empire fell after World War I, the British Indian Army declared Kuwait and “independent sheikdom under British protectorate.” Finally Kuwait got independence in February 25, 1961. The oil fields in Kuwait caused it to get large investments and in 1952 it became the largest exporter of oil. However, during the 1970s, the Kuwaiti government nationalized the Kuwait Oil Company, ending its partnership with Gulf Oil and British Petroleum. Kuwait was hurt in 1982 by the Souk Al-Manakh stock market crash and a decrease in oil price but quickly rebounded and as their oil production increased to fill the gap caused by the war between Iraq and Iran. In 1990, Kuwait was overrun by Iraq for it’s support of Iran in their war and a US-led UN coalition had to come in and expel Iraq. Kuwait had to spend more than $5 billion to repair it’s oil infrastructure from that attack.

It has a population of 2,596,799 which includes 1,291,354 non-nationals to have a population of 1,305,445 nationals. The median age is 26.1 years with men being an average of 28 years of age and women an average of 22.6 years of age. The majority of the population is (70.6%) is between 15-64 years old, with 26.6% being younger and 2.9% being older. Their population growth rate is 3.59 with a birth rate of 21.9 per thousand people and a death rate of 2.37 of every thousand people. General they have more males than females but the ration is close except for 15 years and older where it’s between 1.67 and 1.78 males to every female. Their life expectancy is 77.53 years and 76.38 for males and 78.73 for females. Their fertility rate is 2.81 per woman. Their nationality is Kuwaiti with that being 45% of the population, Arabs being 35%, South Asians being 9% and Iranians being 4%. The major religion is Muslim (85%: 70% Sunni and 30% Shia) and then 15% other (Christian, Hindu, Parsi). The official language is Arabic although English is widely spoken. They have a 93.% literacy rate and are expected to school for 12 years.

Their government is a constitutional emirate (constitutional monarchy) which has 6 governorates which are divided into districts. Thus the executive branch is hereditary (the emir) or appointed (everyone else). Their constitution was approved and promulgated on November 11th, 1962. The AL-SABAH family has ruled since returning to power in 1991 and reestablished an elected legislature that in recent years has become increasingly assertive. The National Assembly consist of fifty members and is elected every four years. It is able to remove the Emir’s appointed Prime Minister or Cabinet members. Two-thirds of Kuwait do not have citizenship and thus can not vote (citizen must have been so for 20 years to vote) and it was not until 2005 that women and could vote increasing the voting population from the tend 15% of the population though members of the armed services and police still can not vote. There are no political parties as this is illegal. Other major groups that try to influence the government are: Islamists; merchants; political groups; secular liberals and pro-governmental deputies; Shia activists; tribal groups. The Judicial branch has civil law with Islamic law over personal matters. At the age of 18 there is compulsory and voluntary military service and there is an obligation until the age of 40 for 1 month annual training. They spend 5.3% of GDP on their military. Some of the major political issues in Kuwait are Education, Foreign workers, election reform, women’s rights, individual rights (gun-control and cross-dressing), Islamic Law, banking and finance, the Shia minority, Corruption and the Oil industry.

Kuwait is the richest country in the Middle East. Their currency is that Kuwaiti dinars. Oil is about half of their GDP with it making up 95% of export revenue and 80% of governmental income (since they are a tax-free society). It has had budget surpluses for ten years and Kuwait has stated it will use it’s financial assets to help stabilize the global financial crisis if needed. Their GDP is $157.9 billion with a real growth rate of 8.1% and a GDP per capita of $60,800. Their GDP is mostly focused in industry (52.2%) and Services (47.5%) with a little bit in agriculture (.3%). They have a labor force of 2.225 million although non-Kuwaitis are about 80% of it. Their unemployment rate is 2.2% and an inflation rate of 11.7%. They put 18.4% of GDP in investment with a public debt of 7.2% of their GDP. Their major agriculture produce is fish. Their major industries are petroleum, petrochemicals, cement, shipbuilding and repair, water desalination, food processing, and construction materials. Their major export partners are Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, US, Netherlands, and China in that order. They import food, construction materials, vehicles and parts, and clothing. Their major import partners are the US, Japan, Germany, China, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Italy, and the UK.