Kuwait: About 500 Kuwaiti activists, mostly women, demonstrated outside parliament yesterday to demand female suffrage amid tensions in the Gulf Arab state over a government drive to grant women political rights.
"Women's rights now," chanted the crowd, which included women dressed in abayas, or traditional long black cloaks. "Our democracy will only be complete with women," said a placard. "We are not less, you are not more.
The crowd later attended a parliamentary session which approved a state request to speed up a bill allowing women to vote and run for parliament. However the 50-man assembly did not set a date to discuss the draft law.
"In all Muslim countries, from Indonesia to Morocco, voting and running for office are among women's rights, but we in Kuwait alone say no," lawmaker Mohammed al-Saqr said to applause from women in the gallery.
Kuwait's constitution stipulates gender equality. Kuwait proposed legislation last May to allow women to vote and run for parliament after a previous attempt in 1999 was shot down by Islamist and tribal lawmakers.
Kuwaiti newspapers said prime minister Sheikh Sabah al- Ahmad al-Sabah had threatened to dissolve parliament if it failed to approve the latest bill.
At the session, lawmakers passed a municipal election law - part of the broader bill - without a government-proposed article to allow women to take part, setting back hopes for approval of wider women's suffrage.
However Sheikh Sabah vowed it would make no difference. "It has no bearing," he said after the session. "We have big hopes the female suffrage draft will be approved."
Kuwaiti women have traditionally been more liberal and educated than those in other Gulf states, who have already won political rights in Bahrain and Qatar. - (Reuters)