Friday
Jun222012
Kuwait Feature: A Guide to the Political Conflict (Ulrichsen)
Friday, June 22, 2012 at 7:11Protesters storm the Kuwaiti Parliament, November 2011
Kuwait's Emir on Monday took the unprecedented step of activating article 106 of the constitution, giving him the right to suspend the National Assembly for one month. It marked the first time in Kuwait's 50-year parliamentary history that the assembly has been suspended in this way, although it was twice dissolved unconstitutionally (in 1976 and in 1986), and has been dissolved constitutionally four times since 2006 alone. Two days later, the Constitutional Court issued an even more momentously abrupt decision as they ruled that the February 2012 election was void and ordered the return of the previous assembly. The ruling by Kuwait's highest court is final and cannot be challenged, and followed a challenge to the constitutionality of December's decree that called for new elections following the dissolution of the previous assembly on December 6 2011.