Monday, Feb 18, 2002
Kuwaiti women march for voting rights
KUWAIT Feb. 17. Kuwaiti women activists, ignoring repeated failure to gain political rights, today marched into voter registration stations to demand the right to add their names to electoral lists. Scores of women in the Muslim conservative Gulf Arab state marched to the stations, waving banners demanding equal rights and reminding the country of a failed 1999 decree by the ruler Emir Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah granting them the right to vote and run for public office. Kuwait has 25 constituencies with registration stations spread across the small country of some 835,000 locals and 1.4 million foreigners. At one station, the district chief was not present and employees told women who gathered there that they had no authority to place their names on voter lists, witnesses said. In Kuwait, the only Gulf Arab state with an elected Parliament, the electorate of some 115,000 eligible male voters are invited to register in February of every year. Kuwait also holds municipal elections for an Assembly which, like Parliament, has a four-year term. The next municipal and general elections are scheduled for 2003. ``When will Kuwaiti women get their political and social rights? Vote and stand in elections?'' read one banner. Following elections in 1999, Kuwait's Parliament rejected the Emir's decree. It later voted against a draft law which would have granted women political rights in the oil-rich state. A new draft law is currently before Parliament. — Reuters
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