Word: parliament
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...harder these days not to have at least some democratic decoration. Which explains why oil-rich Kuwait may have attempted reforms but now, thanks to its enormous reserves, is finding it hard to stick with them. Bush touted the fact that two women have served in the Kuwaiti parliament since suffrage was extended to them 18 months ago. But it was inconvenient for the President to discover that both were appointed by the Emir rather than elected. Worse, one was hounded out of parliament in the face of impeachment hearings last spring, and the other is facing them now. Thanks...
...other people, mostly Sunnis, are being held in Iraqi jails, where their fate remains uncertain. In December, Maliki's cabinet approved a draft law that could free thousands of these prisoners, many of whom were taken in during counter-terrorism sweeps flowing from surge operations. But the Parliament has yet to decide on the measure...
...part, the U.S. has been full of praise for the Iraqi parliament vote on Saturday. An official with the embassy in Baghdad says: "We don't see this so much as a vote on old policies than as a vote on Iraq's future," even though the vote was a clear reversal of policy introduced by Bush's hand-picked Iraq czar in 2003, L. Paul Bremer III. It was one of a handful of laws the U.S. was eager to see Iraq's Parliament tackle. Others are the oil law, the election law and a provincial powers...
...Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed presented Bush with an obscene necklace consisting of a number of increasingly large solid gold stars encrusted with scores of diamonds, rubies and emeralds. Though Bush talked up his "Freedom Agenda" there, his aides dodged questions about the fact that 50% of the country's parliament is appointed by Sheikh Khalifa, who is also the lifetime "President." Saudi Arabia, the most repressive of all the countries Bush visited on his trip, tried to outdo the "President Sheikh" Monday evening with a jewel-laden gold medallion dangling from a chain encrusted with rubies and emeralds...
...sword dance. Which was charming. It's not as if Bahrain doesn't have money - it just doesn't have obscene amounts of money from oil exports. Not coincidentally democratic reform has moved forward consistently over the last ten years, producing a new constitution and a bicameral parliament. A U.S. ambassador in the region says the relationship between oil wealth and democratic development explains the difference. "Bahrain has a large population that's unemployed and there are debates about resource allocation," he says. "If people can't participate in those debates, that's going to fuel tension and instability...