The Financial Times (UK) reports that following the demise Sunday of Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmed al-Sabah, Kuwait's ruler for 27 years, there has been a public debate over whether the new emir, 78-year-old Sheikh Saad al-Abdullah al-Sabah, "will be able to pronounce a two-line oath of office in parliament."[1] -- This problem has, as the London paper tactfully put it, "underlined the extent to which he is incapacitated by ill health." -- NOTE: Kuwait, with fewer than a million citizens (though the country's total population is about 2.8 million), possesses about 10% of the world's petroleum. -- Kuwait is the only country in the world with no natural lake or water reservoir, though its name means "fortress built near water." ...
World
Middle East & Africa
KUWAIT STRUGGLING TO RECOVER SENSE OF PURPOSE
By William Wallis (Kuwait) and Robin Allen
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/94b678a0-8927-11da-94a6-0000779e2340.html
As Kuwaitis gathered on Thursday to commemorate the life of the late emir, Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmed al-Sabah, who died on Sunday after ruling the oil-rich sheikhdom for 27 years, questions over his succession began to loom.
The 78-year-old Sheikh Saad al-Abdullah al-Sabah was, as crown prince, automatically named emir. But a public debate on whether he will be able to pronounce a two-line oath of office in parliament has underlined the extent to which he is incapacitated by ill health.
The ruling al-Sabah family has yet to conclude deliberations over naming a new crown prince. Nor has it decided whether the most likely candidate, the current prime minister and de facto ruler of the past five years, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed, who is himself 77 and fitted with a pacemaker, would assume both roles or even take over as emir.
With Kuwaitis united in mourning, there is no sense of crisis. But the age and health of the country's leadership, and absence of a plan to accommodate branches within the ruling family while also nurturing a younger generation in the royal family, have raised longer-term worries.
In the opinion of many of its own businessmen and intellectuals, Kuwait -- which controls around a tenth of the world's oil reserves -- has yet to recover a sense of purpose since its liberation by U.S.-led coalition forces from Iraqi occupation in February 1991.
With other Gulf states such as Dubai and Saudi Arabia beginning to adapt aggressively to global economic change, Kuwait's performance has begun to look sluggish.
"This is not just a family affair. This is a country that needs someone to look forward and plan, and who has persuasive powers to push through change," said a former top-ranking government official. "We were the pace-setters in the region but we don't want to wake up one day and find that we are no longer in the race."
In the last decade Kuwait's national assembly, once the standard-bearer for millions of Arabs who wanted a greater say in how their countries were run, has become associated with fruitless confrontation.
Islamist and secular members of the 50-seat parliament tend to see corruption behind every government initiative and have held up plans to bring in Western companies to improve maintenance and develop ageing northern oilfields.
As divisive an issue as any is the use of Kuwait as a base for U.S. troops in Iraq -- though many Kuwaitis agree that, without a defense umbrella from the U.S., the country would be at the mercy of power shifts in neighboring states Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. But, as elsewhere in the region, more conservative groups resent the U.S. for its support for Israel and its intrusiveness in the region.
Money is not a problem. With a record $23bn (19bn euros, £13bn) budget surplus in 2005, thanks to soaring energy prices, there are few short-term issues that cannot be papered over.
But with over half the population under 30, many Kuwaitis question how long what one diplomat described as the "singular form of controlled conservatism" with which the country has been run will remain appropriate.
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