Guest Post by F. Gregory Gause III
On Wednesday, Dec. 16, the Kuwaiti parliament, for the first time in its history held a confidence vote on the prime minister. Shaykh Nasir
al-Muhammad won the vote by a margin of 35-13, with one abstention. This may sound like ordinary Parliamentary politics. In Kuwait, it isn't.
The Kuwaiti constitution allows the legislature to declare an
"inability to cooperate with the government" by a majority vote of the
elected representatives. (There are 50 elected members of the Kuwaiti
parliament; government ministers also have a vote in the parliament,
but not on confidence votes.) But, in the past, when such votes were
threatened the Amir either accepted the government's resignation
(usually reappointing the prime minister to form a new government) or
dissolved the parliament, rather than subject a senior member of the Al
Sabah family to a confidence vote.
It was only in the last year or so
that the ruling family has allowed confidence votes on its members who
held ministerial positions. The parliament can also vote no
confidence in individual ministers, who must resign if they cannot get
majority support of the elected members. Shaykh Jabir al-Khalid, the
Interior Minister, survived such a confidence vote yesterday (Dec. 17)
by a narrower majority -- 26-18, with 5 abstentions. A confidence
motion on the prime minister is unprecedented.
This is a big step in Kuwaiti politics, a confirmation of
constitutional government and, one hopes, the beginning of the end of
the stand-off between the legislature and the government that has led
to six different governments since February 2006 and three elections
since June 2006.
Who voted for the PM and who voted against? The voting line-up is not "official," since the government insisted
that the session be closed, but was reported by those in attendance.
The line up of the vote, according to al-Hayat, was as follows: Those
opposed to the prime minister were the Popular Action bloc (headed by
former parliament speaker Ahmad al-Sa'dun) and the "Reform and
Development" bloc, a group of independent Islamist and tribal MP's.
Standing with the PM were the liberals (except Salih al-Mulla, who
abstained), the salafi Islamist bloc headed by Khalid al-Sultan, Shi'a
parliamentarians and assorted tribal and independent MP's. All four
women MP's voted with the PM.
Why the government insisted on closing the session was not made clear;
perhaps it was some vestigial worry about embarrassing the PM. It
would have been better to have the session be public, for purposes of
transparency and popular involvement. But, still, this marks an
important turn in Kuwaiti politics, possibly toward more of a
"constitutional monarchy" model. The next step will be allowing a
confidence motion in the prime minister when the outcome is not so easy
to predict. But this vote is certainly a step forward from the
constant atmosphere of crisis, parliamentary dissolution and early
election that has characterized Kuwaiti politics since the messy
succession of Sabah al-Ahmad to the position of amir in January 2006.
F. Gregory Gause, III is professor of political science at the
University of Vermont. His latest book, just published, is The
International Relations of the Persian Gulf (Cambridge University
Press, 2010).
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