Fulfilling the Requirements of Democracy!
Many politicians and political elites in Kuwait, and perhaps in other countries, hide behind the scenes of truth suppression, despite their full awareness of that truth. They fear speaking about it, profit from concealing it, or treat it as a bargaining chip when they deviate from it or feign incomprehension. Alternatively, they may have other personal, interest-based, or partisan motives for ignoring or bypassing it.
The truth is that Kuwait’s parliamentary system and electoral system, like many others, suffer from structural imbalances and issues that divert them from the straight path of democracy, failing to fulfill the requirements of popular participation, the rotation of legislative power and its seats, and democratic neutrality.
The truth is also that parliamentary systems and electoral regimes, in their current flawed state, are corrupt and detrimental to democratic practice and its outcomes. They are marred by obstacles that distort proper democratic representation and control electoral systems through mechanisms for distributing constituencies on geographical, ethnic, racial, or administrative bases, driven by a controlling rather than “neutral” logic. This renders them distorted and corrupt, as they are built on entrenching the “inheritance of parliamentary seats” through procedures and mechanisms that ensure “stereotypical representation” in parliament from “sectarian, ethnic, familial, or geographical components.” Compounding this corruption is the fact that, in most systems, there is no cap on the number of times one can run for office, thereby wasting the “idea of rotating legislative power” and changing democratic representation. Moreover, the stereotypical “controlling” division of constituencies makes the “demographic, factional, and geographical composition” a monopoly of a specific social class, ethnic group, or sectarian component.
Article 6 of the Kuwaiti Constitution states that “the system of government in Kuwait is democratic, sovereignty belongs to the nation as the source of all powers, and the exercise of sovereignty shall be in the manner specified by this Constitution.” The real problem lies in the implementation of this provision and similar ones.
The representation of the nation, which holds sovereignty, has “denied its right” and been stripped of fair representation. The idea of rotating legislative power and its seats has been confiscated; this is the core of democratic systems, for “there is no democracy without the rotation of legislative power,” whether legal or actual, or both!
Representation of the nation is deficient under an electoral system that allows participation by only about 50 percent or less of voters, who originally constitute less than 30 percent of the population in the political sense (those entitled to vote). Among this minority of voters (50 percent), we find that electoral constituencies include no more than 12 percent of those voters. If the rate of successful votes does not exceed 9 percent of the votes in a constituency, and often shrinks to 2.5 percent, representation becomes merely symbolic. If the majority of those votes come from a single ethnic, tribal, familial, or sectarian component, this constitutes a distortion of the nation’s representation!
This problem intensifies when voters’ choices are between candidates who repeatedly run for office or have inherited their seats from predecessors. Democracy then becomes formalistic, representing specific groups or factions, and monopolized by recurring figures and personalities or their heirs. At that point, representation of the nation becomes nonexistent, and the idea of rotating legislative power and its seats dissipates. There is no justification for those who claim this is democracy, arguing that “the people choose!” This argument would only be valid if the electoral system were freed from factors that pre-determine and fix voter composition, and if candidacy were subject to the idea of continuous rotation of parliamentary seats rather than their monopoly and control by recurring figures, by setting a fixed term of membership, such as two terms or a maximum of 10 years, for example.
Accordingly, reforming the electoral system by eliminating all its flaws and shortcomings is what ensures a sound democratic system. Therefore, non-geographical electoral districts, randomly drawn by lottery before each election based on individuals’ birthdays, would achieve this objective. Electoral law should stipulate that candidacy terms be limited to two or three terms, or a maximum of ten years, to fulfill the requirements of representing the nation and ensuring the peaceful transfer of legislative power. Such a system would render electoral districts neutral, free from the influence of any party, and ensure that voters’ choices are free from familial, factional, political, or financial pressures. In this way, the avenues for corruption within both the electoral and democratic systems would be closed simultaneously.
