Suspicious meetings of Kuwaiti opposition, Qatari officials

Cairo – 22 July 2017: Although Qatari politics has been notorious for the absence of opposition, whose figures had to flee the country over arrests and harassment by the regime; representatives of high-ranking Qatari officials have been holding meetings with Kuwaiti opposition members who enjoys great freedom.

Islamists compose the great majority of the Kuwaiti opposition, unlike the Qatari opposition that is more liberal and reject Islamist groups, especially extremist radical groups like the Muslim Brotherhood that is an outlawed group in Egypt.

Background on Kuwaiti Opposition

Kuwait has been well known for having a strong opposition that won almost half the seats (24 out of 50) at the parliament in November 2016, according to BBC Arabic. The participation percentage reached 70 percent in an election that was comprised of 293 candidates.

Many of these candidates announced throughout the campaign that they would halt the government’s austerity plans aiming to make up for the fall in oil prices and decreased state revenues. The Kuwaiti government cut fuel subsidies last year, which has caused an 80 percent price hike in such goods.

In 2012, opposition groups formed a coalition called “Karamet Watan” to protest the amendments in elections laws, reducing the number of candidates for which a citizen is allowed to vote from four to one. That was a step perceived by the opposition as an attempt to demean their chances in representation.

Karamet Watan boycotted the parliamentary elections in 2012 and organized a rally to protest these amendments.

That has given room for the Shiite minority composing almost 30 percent of the Kuwaiti population to win the biggest share of all coalitions as it got 17 out of 50 seats.

In 2016 elections, each voter had the right to vote for 10 candidates in his/her district.
That makes clear that the Kuwaiti state has not been intervening in elections nor had an involvement in altering the results in favor of a specific political tendency or the elimination of another. By conducting reforms that would achieve the ambitions of various groups and citizens, the state highlights their openness to learn from different perspectives and perceived mistakes of the past.

Qatari proximity to Kuwaiti opposition

As reported by al Arabeya.net, Abdulla Taher, the lawyer of the former Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassem, used to meet with Kuwaiti opposition figures frequently.
Nevertheless, Taher’s visits to Kuwait also included meetings with Kuwaiti figures that used to criticize bin Jassem and object his acts, as these visits were nominally a follow-up on the lawsuits filed by bin Jassem to his Kuwaiti critics.

His last visit to Kuwait was in mid-June where he participated in a meeting with Mosalam El Barak, a leading opposition figure of Karamet Watan, and Muslim Brotherhood members, according to Kuwaiti lawyer Bassam El Assoussy.

El Assoussy questioned if the same behavior would be accepted in Doha, if representatives of Kuwaiti officials would meet with the Qatari opposition.

“That man (Taher) has been meeting with Kuwaiti oppositionists who played a big role in the Arab Spring and its subsequent events, and they were part of initiating crisis in the country through movements like Karamet Watan and El-Herak,” El-Assoussy said.

El-Herak is a Shiite opposition group backed by Iran and its military arm in Lebanon, Hezbollah, and is perceived as attempting to destabilize the country.

In light of the ruling, on Thursday, that 15 Kuwaitis were involved in espionage, proving to be members of the El-Abadly cell affiliated with Hezbollah, Kuwait asked Iran to reduce its diplomatic representation in the country to four personnel.

El-Assoussy questioned the timing of the visit that took place only a few days after the eruption of the crisis whereby four Arab states – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain – cut diplomatic ties with Qatar on June 5.

The Kuwaiti lawyer expressed his wish for Qatar to allow meetings, on their own soil, with opposition figures like Abdulla bin Bajad, Mashary El Zaydi and others countering the Muslim Brotherhood backed by Qatar.