Change in the air?

It's official: we have four female members of parliament. Aseel Al-Awadi, Salwa Al-Jassar, Massouma Al-Mubarak and Rola Dashti will be going down in Kuwaiti history as the first women to ever join the National Assembly. This is truly iconic in any democratic system, seeing that Kuwaiti women were only given suffrage and the right to run for parliament back in 2005.

Four. أربع

Women. نساء

And what's more: the elections have revealed a decrease in the number of Islamists elected into parliament, from 21 in the last session to 11 this time around. An increase in Shi'a Muslim MPs has also been noted, jumping from five to nine representatives.

Is this a sign? Maybe people aren't liking the fundamentalists anymore? Is Kuwait bound to get better from this point?

While I can't stress how much of a turning point this is for us as Kuwaitis and Arabs, I don't think our problems will be solved just yet. According to Reuters, Kuwait still needs to approve a five-billion dollar economic stimulus package which was rejected by the previous parliament, as well as work together with other government figures to push major infrastructural projects forward [including the City of Silk in Subiya and Kuwait's largest hospital, the Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah Hospital in South Surra]. Still, the fact that we actually have female MPs this time around should hopefully pave the road to a different [better?] Kuwait.

In the meantime, all I'm worried about is whether or not Aseel Al-Awadi and Rola Dashti will be harassed by the few fundamentalist MPs to wear hijabs.