The Constitutional Court will announce its verdict on September 25 in the ongoing electoral boundaries case filed by the government. The government had asked the Court to rule on a 2006 law that divides Kuwait into five constituencies.

The Court will also rule on the number of votes a voter can cast, which is currently four. The opposition block, which won the majority in the 2012 parliament before it was annulled by the Constitutional Court ruling in June, took to the streets in protest recently as they are opposed to changing the current elections law.

Attorney Hussein Al-Asfour told the Friday Times yesterday that, in his opinion, the Constitutional Court will rule in favor of the government and declare the law unconstitutional.

“The verdict has two parts. It will decide the first article of the elections law regarding the five constituencies, while the second part is related to Article 2 of the law regarding the number of votes. I think that the verdicts will change the five constituencies into 10, most probably,” he pointed out.

According to Al-Asfour, the current five constituencies have not proven fair to all citizens. “I assume that the court will say it is changing the current constituencies because this system is unjustified for all Kuwaitis, which is against the principles of the Kuwaiti Constitution.

For instance, residents of certain areas in Kuwait do not vote, as these areas were not included in the system, although there are people living in them. And this is one of the main reasons,” explained Al-Asfour. Further, demography is different within these Kuwaiti areas.

“The current elections law with five constituencies was not fair to many categories of the community. For instance, one constituency had only 60,000 voters, while another constituency had 150,000, which is not equal at all. Also, in the fifth constituency, which is mostly tribal, all candidates were from only two tribes, the Ajmi and Azmi tribes, while the Otaibi tribe was not represented.

In addition, the independent candidates, mostly Sunni Hadar and Shia, were also not present,” he stated. Regarding the second part of the verdict pertaining to Article 2 of the elections law, Al-Asfour noted that the Constitutional Court is expected to announce that this part does not fall under the court’s jurisdiction, and that parliament is in charge of deciding the number of votes each voter may cast. “The constituencies will be changed after annulling the parliament with an ‘Importance Decree’ next October.

Then elections will be held in December of this year. And I expect that parliament will change the current number of votes from four to two votes for each voter. Anyway, this is my analysis, which may not be ruled by the Constitutional Court, though I base it on my studies,” concluded Al-Asfour.