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20 Till: LEGAL STATUS OF THE ARABIAN GULF STATES
the most severe punishments prescribed by ShaiTah law were sus-
pended.1
This gloomy picture of the Kuwait system of government has be-
comc quitc irrelevant to Kuwait after attaining her full independence
on 19 June 1961. Since that dale Kuwait has moved rapidly towards
a constitutional system of government, with an elected parliament,
a strong council of ministers and an organised administrative
machine. Under a new constitution, which was drafted by Egyptian
experts, a National Assembly of fifty members was elected in January
1963, ‘for a four-year term, by all natural-born literate Kuwaiti males
over the age of 21’. The executive authority has been vested in a
Council of Ministers, the membership of which includes both Shaikhs
;
and commoners. The Prime Minister and his Ministers need not be
members of the National Assembly which itself has no power to force
i the resignation of the Prime Minister by a vote of no confidence
against his government. However, if, in this case, the Assembly
approaches the Amir, the supreme executive power, he could either
dismiss the Prime Minister and his cabinet or dissolve the National
Assembly. Since the Constitution does not sanction the establishment
of political parties in Kuwait, the candidates for the National
Assembly are required to stand as individuals.2
In December 1965 a constitutional crisis reflecting the tension be­
tween the traditional ruling family, which is strongly represented in
the Council of Ministers, and the only opposition group in the
National Assembly, representing eight Kuwaiti-born members of the
Arab Nationalist Movement, resulted in the voluntary resignation of
these members from the Assembly, in protest against what they re­
garded as non-Arab measures adopted by the pro-government
Assembly. On completing its four-year term of office, the National
Assembly was dissolved by the Ruler and on 25 January 1967 a new
fifty-member Assembly was elected. But this time the opposition group

1 Hay, op. cit., p. 101. And see Marlowe, op. cit., pp. 135-6, where he, perti­
. nently, states: ‘In Kuwait, as in Bahrain, the British Protectorate status was later
to prove embarrassing to the British Government in that it involved support for
the ruling House without any provision for influencing its domestic policies
which, as in Bahrain,, were uncompromisingly autocratic, without being scandal­
Hul ously tyrannical.’
-1
" : 2 See Europa Publications, op. cit., p. 389: The E.I.U., Quarterly Economic
Ev::: Review, op. cit., p. 47; The International Bank of Reconstruction and Develop­
ment, Report of Missions Organised by the Bank, The Economic Development of
Kuwait, Baltimore (1965), p. 12. For an interesting comment on the Kuwaiti
constitutional experiment, see Kelly, J. B., The Future in Arabia’, International
Affairs, 42 (1966), p. 633. Here the writer says: ‘The constitution and the assembly
simply function to provide some of the native Kuwaitis with a morc-or-less harm­
less outlet for their political energies. Real power still resides with the Ruler and
his Council of Ministers, which is composed of members or adherents of the Al-
Sabah.’