Kuwait Speaker adjourns parliament

Dubai: Speaker of Parliament Jassim Al Kharafi was left with little option on Tuesday but to adjourn parliament until January 15 following the withdrawal of 15 cabinet ministers from the session.

The session had been due to discuss the inquiry filed by three Salafi members of parliament (MPs) into Prime Minister Shaikh Nasser Al Mohammad Al Sabah and his cabinet.

The inquiry was provoked by the fact that Iranian Shiia cleric Mohammad Al Fali was allowed to enter Kuwait despite a security ban in place against him. The ban was based on charges that Al Fali insulted the first two Caliphs in one of his sermons at a gathering in Kuwait early this year.

Al Fali, who was charged by a lower court and ordered to pay a fine, was awaiting a final verdict from the court of appeal when he was deported before the court could give its decision.

The Salafi MPs insist that the deportation of Al Fali was not sufficient punishment and that the government should not have allowed him to reenter the country.

MP Dr Nasser Al Sanei told Gulf News that the cabinet's decision to withdraw from the parliamentary session yesterday had come as a shock.

Not aware

"Some cabinet members were not aware beforehand about the plan to leave the hall of the dome where the parliament convenes. It took Minister of Finance Mustafa Jasim Al Shamali a few minutes before he realised that his colleagues in the cabinet had already left the hall, so he left the meeting while he was busy talking to the head of the budget committee, completely unaware that the cabinet was withdrawing," Al Sanei said.

He said it had been expected that the cabinet would simply request the inquiry be postponed.

"We were under the impression that the cabinet would have the support of 17 MPs to postpone the inquiry. This, together with its own 16 members, would constitute a majority," he said.

Inquiry

Al Sanei said no one could understand or explain why the cabinet withdrew. He added that the cabinet appeared to make a knee-jerk reaction to the speaker's decision to start the session with a discussion on the inquiry. At that time, a member of the cabinet approached the speaker and said that unless the parliament discussed the topics on the agenda in order, the cabinet would withdraw.

The speaker in turn insisted that he could not begin the session with topics of lesser importance when an inquiry had been lodged against the prime minister.

"I have a feeling that the government wanted to endorse the controversial appointment of the head of Audit Bureau before discussing the fate of the inquiry," Al Sanei said.

He said it remained possible that a deal could be struck to end the impasse and indicated that something would happen before the next scheduled session in mid-January.

MP Dr Walid Al Tabtabai, one of three lawmakers who filed the inquiry, told Gulf News that he did not regret his move and would like to see the cabinet address the matter.

"It is the right of the people of Kuwait to know why their government failed to secure their social and financial stability in handling a number of incidents in the past few months," he said.