Kuwaiti Caucus-Race?

I posted already about the dissolution of the Kuwaiti Parliament. It's clear enough now: The Amir is not amused.

First, let me say that I agree with the Amir to some extent, though some of what I'm about to say criticizes him as well as Parliament. The whole pariamentary procedure dance is an indulgence in the present economic crisis, wavering oil prices, and when you are Kuwait, with Iraq (of recent unhappy memory) and Iran as big neighbors, Saudi Arabia looking over your shoulder and the US Army sitting on your territory, you are not completely free to indulge your preferences.

The Kuwaiti Parliament has no formal political parties, but is made up of clear-cut blocs of Arab nationalists, Amir's men, tribal representatives, Sunni Islamists, Shi'ite Islamists, and secular Shi'ites. It's got a lot of folks with grievances, and that's good; there's no easy outlet when their grievances involve disagreements with the ruling family, however.

The constitutional dance of the past three years is not helping convince the Arab world of the wisdom of Parliamentary democracy. This will be the third Parliamentary election in as many years. There have been several Cabinet reshuffles in between, but the fundamental issue remains a fundamental one: can Parliament interrogate the Prime Minister?

In a Westminster system, of course. In the American system, Congress and the President are separate entities and while Executive Branch officers testify before Congress, the President is not interrogatable (though Thomas Jefferson did once go up to the Hill). The Kuwaiti system has a glitch: constitutionally, Parliament can interrogate Cabinet officials. The Prime Minister is a Cabinet official. Parliament cannot interrogate the Ruling Family, of course, since it rules by their toleration. Until recently, the Prime Minister was also the Crown Prince. That raised issues, and today the Prime Minister is a mere nephew of the Amir, and not the Crown Prince. But he is still a Royal. You begin to see the problem.

The Amir was pretty disdainful of the present Parliament, but I don't know if that is the best way to get a more tractable body. Quote: "Parliament has rights, but they come with responsibilities. Democracy is a tool, not a goal in itself."

Good luck with that. I think King Charles I of England, Louis XVI of France and Nicholas II of Russia had some similar attitudes towards their Parliament/Estates General/Duma. If the new Parliament looks a lot like the old, what will he do then? Kuwait deserves great credit for having a functioning Parliament, a genuine separation of powers (even if the Amir is still supreme and checks and balances are not in place), and for only occasionally suspending the system.

But this whole, recurring clash between the Government and the Parliament is getting monotonous. Someone has to cut the Gordian knot and decide whether the Prime Minister and other Cabinet Royals are answerable to Parliament, or not. Perhaps it's even time to have fewer Royals in the Cabinet? For some reason it reminds me of the "Caucus-Race" in Alice in Wonderland (and of course as its name implies, Lewis Carroll was mocking British Parliamentary politics):

What IS a Caucus-race?' said Alice; not that she wanted much to know, but the Dodo had paused as if it thought that SOMEBODY ought to speak, and no one else seemed inclined to say anything.

"Why,"' said the Dodo, "the best way to explain it is to do it." (And, as you might like to try the thing yourself, some winter day, I will tell you how the Dodo managed it.)

First it marked out a race-course, in a sort of circle, ("the exact shape doesn't matter," it said,) and then all the party were placed along the course, here and there. There was no "One, two, three, and away,'" but they began running when they liked, and left off when they liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over. However, when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo suddenly called out "The race is over!" and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, "But who has won?"

This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of thought, and it sat for a long time with one finger pressed upon its forehead (the position in which you usually see Shakespeare, in the pictures of him), while the rest waited in silence. At last the Dodo said, "EVERYBODY has won, and all must have prizes."

The problem here, of course, is that no one has a prize. I really do admire the Kuwaitis for having the longest lasting (with gaps) parliamentary electoral system in the Gulf, and one that is genuinely, if imperfectly, reflective of public opinion. But how the Parliament and the monarchy relate is still a big issue; Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad was a long-serving diplomat before he became Amir, and perhaps he will be wiser than some of his predecessors. But perhaps, too, the system needs to be changed: liberalized to permit, for example, a non-Royal Prime Minister, genuinely responsible to Parliament? Or to simply spell out what can, and what cannot, be demanded of a Prime Minister? The Constitution does not precisely match the actual implementation of power.

And of course, neither I nor any other American can tell the Kuwaitis how to run their system. But I do hope the Kuwaitis will look at other historical models if their system continues to freeze up with such regularity. They are in way too dangerous a neighborhood to pursue a Belgian degree of politifcal paralysis. (Okay, I'll get complaints from Belgians, but I hope the point is clear.)