KUWAIT: Powerful Islamist and reformist candidates swept Kuwait's election but women failed to win a single seat in their first attempt to run for parliament, results showed yesterday.
Analysts and newspapers said a strong showing by the opposition - a loose coalition of pro-reform ex-MPs, Islamists, leftists and liberals - raises the possibility of deeper tension between the new assembly and the government.
Opposition candidates won two-thirds of the seats, state media said, but the new parliament will remain exclusively male.
"Women failed us," said Zikra al-Majdali, a 39-year-old lawyer who ran in an ultra-conservative Islamist area, referring to hopes among female candidates that women - voting for the first time - would help elect at least one of them.
"Forty years of struggle by women was distilled into only a month to prepare [ for polls]," candidate Aisha al-Rushaid said. "It was a good experience; we learnt from it, but circumstances were not aligned in favour of women."
The poll was called after Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah dissolved parliament in May following a stand-off over electoral reforms. Analysts said the election results were not likely to resolve the dispute over these reforms, namely demands for the government to cut the number of constituencies to stop malpractices such as vote buying.
Al-Qabas newspaper said the outcome was "a loss for pro-government candidates".
"The same tension will be there," Mustafa Behbahani of consultancy Kuwaiti Gulf Group told Reuters, adding the house and government "may reach a compromise . . . but if the status quo stays, tension will heat up".
None of the 28 women among a total of 249 candidates won a seat even though women make up 57 per cent of the Gulf Arab state's 340,000 voters.Women won the right to run for office and to vote in May 2005. Overall turnout was heavy at 65 per cent but only 35 per cent for women.
Experts had expected voting by the powerful conservative Islamists and tribes would hurt the chances of women candidates.