KUWAIT CITY, Dec 13: Women’s rights activist Khawla Atheeqi is skeptical of the chances of female candidates in the upcoming elections.
The activist was talking to the Arab Times Tuesday about her views on the election and the political changes taking place in Kuwait currently.
Women MPs, she opined, have let down the people who supported them and placed their hopes on them. “They were given a chance in the last elections, but they were simply content to toe the government’s line and were ineffective in the Parliament.”
Moreover, Atheeqi feels, the upcoming elections will be fought along the lines of a series of issues in which gender rights will take a back seat. “This will prejudice the chances of female candidates.”
Atheeqi does not see the new Parliament being very different from the previous one. “Just that we won’t have women this time. Otherwise, it will be mostly the same faces we saw last time.”
The reason for her glum take is that she feels the issue of corruption, which is most likely to dominate this election, has always been there. The government’s weakness in tackling corruption has been fully exposed, and the women MPs, instead of squaring up to the government, have been acting in conformity with them, she added.
When asked about the active participation of the youth movements in this election, who in the first place were responsible for the dissolution of the assembly and the subsequent re-elections, Atheeqi said that the youth movements have yet to get their act together.
While change is something everyone is looking forward to, there is really no consensus on the direction of that change, she added. “The youth movements are still too disparate and have not come out with a clear cut agenda for this election.”
This lack of clarity has weakened the cause of youth movements, she noted, which will play into the hands of the politicians. “Therefore, I think, the old MPs will come back, and I don’t see a drastic change in the composition of the Parliament after this election.”