General elections were held in

Kuwait Kuwait (; ar, الكويت ', or ), officially the State of Kuwait ( ar, دولة الكويت '), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated in the northern edge of Eastern Arabia at the tip of the Persian Gulf, bordering Iraq to the nort ...

on 5 December 2020. Two-thirds of the incumbents lost their seats, including the 2016 parliament's sole woman MP Safa Al Hashem.

Background

Registration of candidates contesting for the 50 seats of the

National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the repre ...

took place between 26 October and 4 November 2020. 102 schools were used for the 2020 National Assembly elections on December 5. Each school had a clinic set up to check on the health condition of all those entering.

Electoral system

The 50 elected members of the National Assembly are elected from five 10-seat constituencies by

single non-transferable vote Single non-transferable vote or SNTV is an electoral system used to elect multiple winners. It is a generalization of first-past-the-post, applied to multi-member districts with each voter casting just one vote. Unlike FPTP, which is a single-winn ...

. Political parties are not officially licensed, therefore candidates run as individuals, although many political groups operate freely as de facto political parties. All Kuwaiti citizens (both male and female) above the age of 21 have the right to vote. Expatriate workers, who constituted 70% of the population, were not enfranchised.

Results

Overall, opposition candidates won 24 seats, up from 16 in the previous parliament. The election was seen as a victory for the anti-government opposition bloc. Thirty of the elected candidates were under the age of 45; whilst there were 29 female candidates, none were elected, leaving the parliament without a female MP for the first time since the year 2012. There was a total of 567,694 registered voters, of which 394,131 cast a valid vote.

Aftermath

Following the elections, a new Speaker of the National Assembly was elected on 15 December. Incumbent Speaker

Marzouq Al-Ghanim Marzouq Ali Mohammed Al-Ghanim ( ar, مرزوق علي محمد ثنيان الغانم, Marzūq ʿAlī Muḥammad Ṯunayān al-Ghānim, born 3 November 1968, Abdullah Al-Salem, Kuwait) is a former speaker of the Kuwaiti National Assembly, re ...

was re-elected with 33 votes, defeating Bader Nasser Al-Humaidi, who received 28. Four members did not vote. Parliament unanimously approved a motion of noncooperation, meaning the cabinet must be replaced.

References

General election A general election is a political voting election where generally all or most members of a given political body are chosen. These are usually held for a nation, state, or territory's primary legislative body, and are different from by-elections ( ...

December 2020 events in Asia Elections in Kuwait Non-partisan elections {{Kuwait-stub