According to the official results of the ballot, opposition candidates won 34 of the 50 seats in the National Assembly .Twenty-three of the 34 seats went to Sunni Islamists, including Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Liberals won nine seats and the remaining seven seats went to candidates from the Shia minority community.
While women voters made up 54 percent of the electorate and there were 23 women among 286 candidates running for the legislative body, no women were elected. There were four women in the last parliament.
This was Kuwait’s fourth parliamentary elections in six years.
Kuwait’s Emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed Al Sabah, called the snap election after dissolving parliament on December 6 a week after then Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser al-Mohammed Al Sabah and his cabinet resigned after months of street protests and before being questioned in parliament about the alleged payment of bribes to pro-government MPs and misusing public funds.
Sheikh Sabah replaced Nasser with outgoing Defense Minister Sheikh Jaber al-Mubarak al-Sabah and asked him to form a government.
Only two of 13 former MPs, who were accused by the opposition of involvement in the scandal, were re-elected in the new parliament.
Although the opposition has won the majority it will not be asked to form the new cabinet because under Kuwaiti law, the premier must be a member of the ruling family appointed by the ruler. But it will have enough power to vote the prime minister or any minister out of office.
