Kuwait's emir dissolves parliament

KUWAIT. December 7. KAZINFORM The emir of Kuwait dissolved his country's parliament Tuesday, three weeks after opposition protesters forced their way into the legislature to demand the prime minister step down; Kazinform refers to CNN.

"Due to the deteriorating conditions that ... threatened the country's higher interests, it became necessary to resort to the people to select their representatives, overcome existing obstacles and realize national interests," Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah said in a decree published by the state-run Kuwait News Agency.

The move comes slightly more than a week after Al-Sabah accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, a member of the Persian Gulf state's royal family, and his cabinet.

Nasser said "negative practices" of a minority of members had made progress impossible. He accused them of promoting disunity, questioning the integrity of the country's leaders and fabricating unfounded accusations.

The decree did not set a date for new elections. Kuwait's last parliamentary vote was held in 2009.

Though Kuwait's National Assembly is elected, the emir appoints the prime minister and the deputy prime ministers. Opposition members had forced six previous governments led by Al-Mohammad Al-Sabah to resign, but demonstrators who stormed the National Assembly on November 16 demanded the prime minister's resignation as well. The emir accepted the resignation 12 days later.

Protests alleging political corruption have taken place since before the Arab Spring brought about demonstrations throughout the region.

The emir denounced the November 16 demonstration as "an unprecedented step on the path to anarchy and lawlessness," and said that the demonstrators were putting the country at risk by their actions.

Tuesday's dissolution of parliament "will make things more stable," predicted Fred Wehrey, senior policy analyst focusing on the Gulf at the RAND Corporation, who was in Kuwait last year working on this issue. RAND is a policy institute.

He noted that parliament has been dissolved seven times since parliamentary elections began in 1963. The fact that three of those dissolutions occurred since the former prime minister was brought to power in 2006 "shows you how polarizing a figure he was and how destabilizing his reign was."

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