Mullings: An American Cyber-column By Rich Galen

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All Politics is ...

Monday July 7, 2003

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From Kuwait City
Kuwait

TRAVELOGUE ALERT: Inasmuch as only one of us was working last Friday, you probably missed the First Chapter of the Kuwait Travelogue, Kuwait Here. I'll Be Right Back, on the Secret Decoder Ring page.

You can catch that and Chapter II: Air France Lost Everything Else, there today, as well.

I will not wear you out with weeks and weeks of analysis about the Parliamentary elections which were held here on Saturday. The principal reason for the unusual amount of interest in the election of 50 people in Kuwait, is because of an unusual amount of interest in Iraq.

President Bush wants Iraq to be free and democratic. Kuwait is free and democratic. It would be a good thing - a very good thing - for the Iraqi people to achieve the level of democracy - including freedom of speech - which was in evidence here over the weekend.

When people speak of "The Government" they mean the Emir and the Council of Ministers which he appoints. It is the equivalent of speaking of "The Administration" in the US.

I came here as a guest of the Kuwaiti government. The Kuwaitis are proud of their traditions of democracy which, by the way, should not be confused with American traditions.

The most obvious difference is: Women can't vote. The total population is 2.1 million. Kuwaiti citizens number approximately 800,000 Only 135,000 men are permitted to vote.

Several years ago, the Emir issued a decree providing for universal suffrage, but that decree was overturned by the Parliament which is a good news/bad news joke. The good news was: The Parliament - in a Gulf States monarchy - had to power to overturn an Emiri decree. The bad news was: They used that power to deny women suffrage.

That was the biggest public issue in this campaign. Would enough new members who favor giving women the right to vote be elected?

Everywhere we went, people talked about the issue - who's fault it was that the decree was overturned, whether women should have to right to vote at all, and if so when; if women did vote would they vote the way their husbands told them to, and so on.

But, that was largely for Western consumption. And for academic debates at Kuwait University. And for newspaper headlines to boost pre-election newsstand sales.

I don't speak Arabic all that well, so this is something of a guess. But I speak politics fluently so I suspect it is a good guess: Very few candidates - even those who favor women voting - ran on giving women the right to vote as a central theme. Neither did most candidates run on the US occupation of Iraq, or whether the Dinar should be tied to the Euro, or the nature of Iraq's relationship with OPEC.

Most candidates ran on local issues of interest to their particular constituency. As Americans, we understand in our bones. The late Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill is credited with popularizing the notion that "all politics is local."

Some candidates probably ran against women voting - especially those in the Islamic movement. But that, too, was because their constituencies felt strongly on the issue, not because they were debating whether, like an Arabian King Canute Society, they could, or should, try to hold back the tide of historical democracy.

This business of appealing to local constituencies was clucked over - loudly - by both academics and those with whom we met in the highest reaches of Kuwaiti royal and merchant society. Each group has the luxury of being insulated from the day-to-day issues of making a living and raising a family.

The big story here will occur over the next couple of days: In Kuwait the Crown Prince also holds the title of Prime Minister. The Emir is likely to separate those titles when he appoints an acting Prime Minister because the Crown Prince is in failing health, but there has been nothing about that in the English language newspapers.

That move will serve the Kuwaiti people well: The unelected Government will keep an eye on Iraq, the Euro and the US. That's the governing part.

Their elected legislators - however flawed the election might have been by our standards - will take care of making sure water and electricity are delivered to the neighborhoods in their constituencies. That's the political part.

And that part is all local.

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: Links to the first two chapters of the travelogue: Kuwait Here. I'll Be Right Back; a map of Kuwait; a Mullfoto showing how hot it was; and the usual things.

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