Kuwaitis are heading for the ballot boxes on Thursday to elect a new parliament in what is being marked as a milestone election for Kuwaiti women.
This is the first time Kuwaiti women are being allowed to participate in legislative elections as both voters and candidates after the Kuwaiti parliament approved an amendment to the election law last May granting women the right to vote and to be elected for both municipal councils and for parliament.
Analysts predict a strong showing of reformists in the elections.
Twenty-eight female candidates are running from 13 constituencies out of a total of 249 candidates. There are 50 seats in the Kuwaiti parliament.
At least one female candidate withdrew from the race following threats to her life.
Women constitute 56 percent of Kuwait’s 340,000 eligible voters. Men and women will be voting in separate voting stations according to the election law, which requires segregation of the sexes. Male judges supervising the elections are assigning female assistants at the voting stations to identify veiled women who will not show their faces to men.
One of the key issues of the election campaigns was the need to fight political corruption.