Manama: Kuwait’s parliament on Tuesday scraped a motion to grill the prime minister after he said that it was not constitutional.
The removal of the questioning bid from the agenda of the weekly session of the 55-member parliament was approved by 39 lawmakers, rejected by 10 while three abstained.
Riyadh Al Adasani, Abdul Karim Al Andari and Hussain Queiaan, the three MPs who had filed the motion last week, did not wish to vote on the request by Prime Minister Shaikh Jaber Al Mubarak Al Hamad Al Sabah to drop it off the debate.
The prime minister thanked the lawmakers for their “commitment to the constitution and the law.”
“I wish they could file a constitutional grilling so that I can respond to it,” Shaikh Jaber said. “I would like also to thank the lawmakers for protecting the constitution,” he said.
“We always welcome positive and effective monitoring by the parliament of executive institutions. Yet the constitution mandated that monitoring tools are bound by conditions and regulations stipulated by by-laws and decisions of the Constitutional Court, which leaves no room for speculations or interpretations,” he said.
No effort is spared to assist the parliament and enable it to assume its responsibilities, he added.
“We are aware that objective monitoring is an asset for government work and that contributes in its soundness. It is unfair to burden a government that has been only nine months in charge with decades of incremental deficiencies.
“Should we induce recent staged events, we should certainly notice that there are relentless efforts to hamper the course of achievement and to create deadlocks, including this grilling that is jam-packed with issues that are in clear violation of the constitution,” he said.
“We believe that both the government and parliament share responsibilities and duties, as well as success. I have faced many grilling motions. I have nothing to fear or evade,” he added.
In his pleadings to argue against moving ahead with the grilling, the state minister for parliament Ali Al Omair said that the move to question the prime minister was not constitutional and that it was against Articles 80 and 100 of the parliament statute.
