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May 4, 2005

Kuwaiti Parliament Blocks Women's Participation in City Council Elections

Let's be clear on what recently happened in Kuwait: a bunch of men, fearing the loss of their political jobs, voted to deny women the right to vote in city council elections and blamed their backwards thinking on religious beliefs. From "Lawmakers Block Women From Voting in Kuwait," by Hassan Fatah in today's NYT:

While the city council holds little political significance, winning the right for women to run for office there was seen as a first step in gaining the right to run for Parliament.
Another interesting quirk of Kuwaiti law is that police officers and military personnel cannot vote. Imagine if the entire military industrial complex in the US were denied participation in the political process. That is, imagine if the United States was no longer governed by politicians who get a large amount of campaign contributions from military contractors and their employees. Would that change our budget priorities? As my fellow WILPFers said in 1979 (and copyrighted) - It will be a great day when schools have all the money they need and the military has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.

Posted by cj at May 4, 2005 1:32 PM

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