KUWAITI WOMEN VIE FOR PARLIAMENTARY SEATS: MOST

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 KUWAIT 000385 SIPDIS NEA/ARP E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/14/2018 TAGS: PGOV PHUM PINR ELAB KWMN KU SUBJECT: KUWAITI WOMEN VIE FOR PARLIAMENTARY SEATS: MOST LIKELY CONTENDERS REF: KUWAIT 000324 Classified By: Political Counselor Pete O'Donohue for reasons 1.4 b and d ¶1. (C) Summary. On May 16, some thirty Kuwaiti women will vie to become the first female elected to parliament (ref A). While Kuwait's female candidates come from varied professional, social and religious backgrounds, almost all of them are politically liberal and support close relations with the U.S. While their stances on the leading issues line up closely with those of Kuwait's liberal male MPs, the women are more dedicated proponents of desegregating schools and of opening prominent positions in the police, the courts, and the military to women. Several of the female candidates say that while they recognize they have only a slim chance of winning, they feel duty-bound to exercise their hard-won political rights and compete in the electoral race. This message presents a snapshot of the eight most prominent female candidates, ordered according to the Embassy's estimation of their chances of winning. End summary. -------------- Aseel Al-Awadhi: Kuwait's New Political Face -------------- ¶2. (C) A charismatic political newcomer, the U.S.-educated Dr. Aseel Al-Awadhi came to national prominence by getting the most votes of any female candidate in the 2008 parliamentary election, and most local observers expect her to do the same in 2009. In 2008, Al-Awadhi's speaking skills, well-organized campaign, and cooperation with the National Democratic Alliance party earned her over 5,000 votes and eleventh place in the third district, just 886 votes short of winning a seat. She campaigned with the National Democratic Alliance and was the only female candidate to run on a ticket rather than independently. She is a politically liberal Sunni and is currently a professor of political philosophy at Kuwait University. For the 2009 election she has hired a veteran campaign manager and is considering campaigning together with MP Saleh Al-Mulla. She announced her candidacy via YouTube. -------------- Rola Dashti: the Ambitious Outsider -------------- ¶3. (C) Dr. Rola Dashti was the most popular female candidate in the 2006 election and the second most popular in the 2008 election, after Aseel Al-Awadhi. An economist by training with a PhD from Johns Hopkins, Dashti is liberal in her politics and Western in her dress. Her voter appeal may be hurt by her Lebanese-accented Arabic, the perception of some local observers that she is an "American puppet," and -- to some degree - by her Shi'a identity (Dashti's mother is a Lebanese Shi'a and her father is a Kuwaiti Sunni). (Note: According to Dashti, in the days before the 2006 election, a liberal opponent launched a smear campaign against her Lebanese Shi'a roots by publicizing a six-year-old photo of her with Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah and claiming it to be recent. End note.) Dashti was a leader in the Kuwaiti suffragette movement which finally won full political rights for women in 2005 and she ran expensive, high-profile campaigns in both 2006 and 2008. -------------- Masouma Al-Mubarak: the First Female Minister -------------- - ¶4. (C) Dr. Masouma Al-Mubarak, Kuwait's first female minister, is a politically liberal, Shi'a professor-politician who wears the hijab. Although no Kuwaiti woman has been elected to parliament, Al-Mubarak became Kuwait's first woman minister when the Amir appointed her to the cabinet in 2005 as Minister of Planning and State Minister for Administrative Development Affairs. Since then she has served as Minister of Communications and Minister of Health. She has told the Embassy she wants close political relations with the U.S., but told PolOff that she cannot condone the U.S. "double standard" of allowing Israel to have nuclear weapons while threatening Iran with sanctions over the same issue. -------------- -------------- Salwa Al-Jassar: "I still believe women should serve men" -------------- -------------- ¶5. (C) In 2008, Dr. Salwa Al-Jassar was the most successful female candidate in the second district (and the third most successful overall),garnering over 2,000 votes. She is politically liberal and socially traditional: she told PolOff that she is from a proud Sunni religious family, KUWAIT 00000385 002 OF 003 prayed for guidance from God before running, considers her husband to be the head of the household, and "still believes women should serve men." She is a professor of education at Kuwait University and earned her MA and PhD at University of Michigan. Her election chances are helped by the fact that she is running in Kuwait's smallest district and was relatively close to winning a seat in 2008. She has decided to have her husband manage her 2009 campaign, although he has little applicable experience. -------------- -------------- Fatima Abdaly: the Anti-Corruption Shi'a Suffragette -------------- -------------- ¶6. (C) Dr. Fatima Abdaly has been the perennial female front-runner in Kuwait's first district (Kuwait's most heavily Shia district, with about half of voters belonging to this sect),receiving over 2,000 votes in 2008 and 794 in ¶2006. Along with Dashti, she was at the forefront of the Kuwaiti suffragette movement and was frustrated that in 2008 she and Dashti were both surpassed in votes by political-newcomer Al-Awadhi. She attributes women's failure to gain a seat in 2006 and 2008 to male Kuwaitis' forty-year head start in running campaigns. She is willing to run on the Justice and Peace bloc's ticket, but says that the bloc's very religious leaders do not approve of having a female candidate. She earned an MA and a PhD in Environmental and Industrial Health Sciences from the University of Michigan, and in 1991 was heavily involved in the effort to put out Kuwait's oil fires. She is currently head of the health and environment team at the Kuwait Oil Company and head of the Health Committee at the Amiri Diwan. She appears optimistic about women's chances and told PolOff she anticipates women will win two seats this May. -------------- -------------- Thikra Al-Rashidi: the Constitutionalist among the Tribes -------------- -------------- ¶7. (C) In the 2008 election, Thikra received over 2,000 votes in Kuwait's fourth district. (Note: Kuwait is divided into five electoral districts. The fourth and fifth districts are dominated by tribes and female candidates have little to no chance of winning there. End note.) She is a lawyer in the Kuwaiti Supreme Court and is currently working towards a PhD in Constitutional Law from Cairo University. She told PolOff that she favors a strict interpretation of Kuwait's constitution and believes in governing based on her personal convictions (as opposed to voting according to her constituents' wants). She opposes tribal primaries (because they are not allowed by the constitution),mandatory gender segregation in schools, and Islamists. She is traditional in her dress, but liberal on most issues. She is a member of the Sunni community, hailing from the generally traditionalist Al-Rashayda bedouin tribe. -------------- Laila Al-Rashed: the Feminist Lawyer -------------- ¶8. (C) Laila Al-Rashed is a liberal Sunni lawyer and businesswoman. She has called for gender-integrated schools and more positions for female judges, police, and soldiers. She said she believes political parties should be legalized but that tribally-based primaries should remain illegal (because they disadvantage tribal members from smaller clans). She told PolOff that no female candidate will win a seat in the 2009 election because many women's votes are influenced by their husbands and fathers. She also said that most Kuwaiti women don't have the millions of dollars necessary to run a strong campaign. She said that despite all this, she feels duty-bound to exercise her hard-won political rights by running for parliament. -------------- -------------- Sheikha Issa Al-Ghanem: Campaigning for Attention -------------- -------------- ¶9. (C) Election campaigns have become a Kuwaiti national sport. With campaign money to spare, many Kuwaitis -- male and female -- run for parliament for the attention and the fun of campaigning, despite the fact that they lack the necessary skills and experience. Al-Ghanem is a prominent example of one of these candidates: she is running for fun and launching a lavish campaign, despite the fact that most observers believe she has no chance of winning. She is a politically liberal Sunni (supports gender integrated schools; opposes tribal primaries) who wears Western dress and projects Westernized cultural attitudes. Her claim to fame, she told PolOff, is that she was the first candidate to hold separate weekly diwaniyas for men and women (men on Sunday, women on Monday). Diwaniyas are Kuwait's evening KUWAIT 00000385 003 OF 003 political salons, and for the past century have been a traditionally male affair. ********************************************* ********* For more reporting from Embassy Kuwait, visit: visit Kuwait's Classified Website at: http://www.intelink.sgov.gov/wiki/Portal:Kuwa it ********************************************* ********* JONES