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Complaints about specific ministers from other ministers and the public at large prompted the entire Cabinet to consider resigning at a late-night meeting last Thursday. But the Prime Minister urged them all to work harder instead. "We'll see where things stand in three or four weeks," an aide reports Sheik Saad as saying. Says a Western diplomat: "Considering the public's anger, and all the weapons available, they're lucky they don't have a new regime by now."
What is really on the government's mind these days, and on everyone else's as well (which is why the government is consumed by it), is the matter of democracy. The Prime Minister, a poet of noncommitment who usually deflects direct inquiries by saying, "That will be discussed," is promising elections for a new parliament. The opposition wants a return to the dissolved 1986 parliament. But that is the same assembly that refused to expand suffrage to include women and "second grade" Kuwaitis -- people who cannot trace their ancestry in Kuwait earlier than 1920.
Many Kuwaitis, including those who served in the resistance, believe that voting rights must be expanded. In addition, says Hamad al-Towgari, 34, a San Jose State University graduate who owns the Kuwait Plaza Hotel, the "real issue is what powers any parliament has. We want to be modern. We want something closer to a constitutional monarchy, something closer to the British ; system." Says Ali Salem, a member of the ruling al-Sabah family: "The oligarchy must give way."
The person who perhaps best expresses the pervasive disgust is Laila al- Qadhi, a Kuwait University English professor. Few say on the record what al-Qadhi says, but many agree with her. "At best," says al-Qadhi, "we have a democracy tailored for a few. It can't be real, of course, until women and the children of expatriates who are born here are entitled to vote as full citizens. Certainly those who stayed and fought for Kuwait while the cowards fled deserve to participate in their government. But I am not optimistic. Many will collaborate to restore the old order because it is so comfortable for so many. The Sabahs are smart. They have bought the loyalty of most with a system that makes all comfortably lazy. What has changed is that we who stayed no longer fear those who rule, and they fear us because we do not fear them. But if we don't change, then the answer to the question 'Is Kuwait worth dying for?' is no."
Among those in the government most disposed to change is Minister of State al-Awadi, an enlightened liberal. "It is not easy to establish a democracy in this part of the world," he says, "especially when other nations will be upset if we do. But it will come, all of it, including the right of women to vote. It will just take time." To which al-Qadhi answers simply, "Why should we have to wait?"