In Kuwait, where the Constitutional Court has ordered the dissolution of parliament for the second time in a year, the Cabinet decided in an emergency meeting to call parliamentary elections for next month. Now the timing of those elections is in question after the Cabinet moved Monday to delay the vote.
Initially scheduled for July 25, when held the elections will be the sixth in seven years for the Persian Gulf state, where, as Al Jazeera reported, “political upheaval has stalled infrastructure development and delayed economic reforms.”
“Kuwait is passing through a period of extended political turbulence and uncertainty, as neither the pro-government nor the opposition camps appear to really know what they want to achieve,” Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Rice University’s Baker Institute fellow for Kuwait and an associate fellow in the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House, told Trend Lines. “The lack of political consensus has led to polarizing decisions over the past year, and care is needed now to try to regain the trust of all stakeholders in Kuwaiti politics.”