Most of the MPs counseled about ‘respecting the judiciary’ and expressed faith that the new voting system, under which each voter was empowered to cast a single vote instead of four, was going to be upheld.
In the meantime, Parliament Speaker Ali Al-Rashid said that he received a request from lawmakers to hold a special session on Thursday in order to vote on five pending draft laws.
“We hope to end the topics on schedule during (today’s and tomorrow’s) sessions so that next week, we can hold weekly sessions to discuss the state budget and the country’s fiscal condition,” he told the reporters on Sunday.
Under the law, the parliamentary term, which otherwise is to end at the beginning of July, cannot come to a close before the MPs pass the state’s budget.
Next Sunday, the Constitutional Court will determine whether an emergency decree released by HH the Amir last October was in keeping with the statute. If not, the court can rule that the elections held based on the single- vote system that the decree implemented as void. In that case, the parliament would ipso facto stand dissolved and new elections would have to be held as per the four-votes-per-voter system.
“Court orders must be respected whether they turn out to be in favor of the incumbent parliament or not,” MP Adel Al-Khurafi told Al-Rai on Sunday. Meanwhile, MP Faisal Al-Kandari assured that the issue “is in the safe hands of the impartial Kuwaiti judiciary.”
In the meantime, MP Hani Shams hoped that the parliament will not be dissolved “as a result of governmental mistakes,” insisting that the government had enough time following the dissolution of the past parliament in June 2012 “to ensure correct procedures.”
MP Hesham Al-Baghli said in the meantime that the court is likely to uphold the decree based on the fact that the constitution gives HH the Amir an “exclusive authority to assess the level of emergency” when it comes to issuing a decree of emergency during the parliament’s absence.
