The registration of the hopefuls will continue for 10 days including Fridays and public holidays and will end on Dec 30, according to a statement by the interior ministry.
Withdrawal of candidates will also start as of today but will continue until four days before e
lection day.
Under the Kuwaiti election law, candidates must be Kuwaiti by birth, with naturalized citizens excluded, and must be included in election rolls and must be 30 years of age on the day of the election.
Candidates, males and females, also must know how to read and write Arabic fluently and should have not been convicted of a crime unless they have been rehabilitated.
The registration will open at the election department in Shuwaikh residential area from 7.30 am until 1.30 pm every day. At the registration, candidates will pay a deposit of KD 50 and then submit the receipt at the main police station in their constituency.
Under the Kuwaiti election system, Kuwait is divided into five electoral districts and each elects 10 MPs to the 50-seat Assembly, but each voter is allowed to vote for a maximum of four candidates.
Public employees who wish to contest the Assembly elections must cease to exercise the duty of their jobs before filing their nomination papers, while judges and prosecutors must resign their jobs before they file.
In another development, police forces set up checkpoints inside Taima area in Jahra yesterday as stateless people, or bedoons, vowed to demonstrate for the second day in a row to demand citizenship and other basic rights. The security presence prevented large groups of protesters from gathering like the previous day as the interior ministry vowed it will firmly prevent any attempt to demonstrate by bedoons, insisting that only Kuwaitis have the right to assembly and gather under the law.
The ministry also said in a statement that pictures taken by its media departments have clearly shown that a number of bedoons committed serious acts of violence against security men, resulting in the injury of several policemen and damage to ministry vehicles.
The ministry however admitted that due to violence committed by bedoons, the special and police forces were forced to use sound and tear gas canisters besides water cannons to disperse the protesters, who refused ministry orders. The police action has brought condemnation by rights activists and organisations who strongly deplored the use of force to disperse the bedoons who were demonstrating peacefully.
