The protest, staged in tribal-dominated Sabahiya was led by a number of former opposition lawmakers, including Musallam Al-Barrak. Protesters also called for an elected popular government in the state. Barrak strongly condemned on Twitter what he called police violence, saying this will not stop opposition protests, which will continue until the realisation of “a constitutional monarchy and elected government”.
Barrak also said yesterday he is opposed to any settlement with the government because it has committed grave violations of the constitution, adding that the government should strike a settlement with the constitution by apologizing for breaching it.
Earlier yesterday, the Assembly comfortably approved an Amiri decree which ratified the settlement between Kuwait Airways Corp (KAC) and Iraqi Airlines under which Iraq will pay $ 500 in compensation. Forty-six MPs and Cabinet ministers voted for the decree, one MP opposed it while another lawmaker abstained. Only 48 MPs and ministers were present at the time of the vote. The approval means that the dispute between the Iraqi and Kuwaiti national carriers from the time of the Iraqi invasion in 1990 is over. HH the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah issued a decree in October ratifying the settlement with Iraq airlines when the Assembly was dissolved.
But the decree had to be approved by the new Assembly in order to be legal and effective. The Assembly will start today debating a decree issued by the Amir in October to privatize the loss-making carrier by transforming it into a company operating on a commercial basis. MPs refused to discuss the decree yesterday because the text was given to them late and they had no time to read it. The government agreed to delay the debate until today.
The Assembly also approved the 2011/2012 development plan although the plan was supposed to have been issued more than two years ago. The approval was a routine procedure required by the four-year development plan law. During the session, the government used its constitutional right to force a delay for two weeks the debate on a request to form a committee to probe contracts for the Jaber Al-Ahmad Causeway linking Kuwait City with Subbiya and the Al-Zour power plant.
The government used the same right regarding parliamentary requests to probe the consequences of the cancellation of a deal with Dow Chemical, an investigation into the issue of expatriate workers in the country and launching a probe into diesel smuggling.
The Assembly approved a request to ask the human rights committee to follow up with the case of the two Kuwaitis detained in Guantanamo Bay prison and gave it three months. During the debate, MPs said the committee should focus its work locally over the rights issue of labourers and bedoons (stateless). MP Faisal Al-Duwaisan charged that the committee should pay greater attention to the illegal deportation of some expatriates from Kuwait, adding that drug cases were fabricated against some expatriates who were deported without going to court.
