By B Izzak

KUWAIT: The constitutional court on Monday delayed a number of petitions challenging the results of the September parliamentary elections until Jan 18 and decided to send two judges to the National Assembly to open ballot boxes. Following the announcement of the results of the Sept 29 polls, dozens of candidates who lost the election filed petitions claiming there were mathematical errors in counting the votes and demanded recounting or recalculation of votes.

The court ordered two of its members to visit the National Assembly building, where ballot boxes are kept, to open them and make sure there were no errors in the calculations. It set the next hearing for Jan 18, when the court will have the total number of votes obtained by each candidate. The court had earlier rejected petitions against two Amiri decrees that amended clauses in laws governing the election and declared the decrees were in line with the constitution. The court rejected other petitions calling to scrap the elections.

Meanwhile, the National Assembly committee on stateless people or bedoons held a meeting and discussed draft laws calling to grant civil, social and employment rights to more than 120,000 bedoons. MP Hani Shams said the committee also discussed several draft laws calling to transfer an independent government body overseeing bedoons to come under the interior ministry.

Shams said the committee will meet government officials in the next two weeks to hear their views about the proposed bills. Bedouns claim the right to Kuwaiti citizenship but authorities insist that a majority of them do not qualify for consideration to Kuwaiti nationality as they or their ancestors had illegally crossed into Kuwait from neighboring nations and destroyed their identification documents. The government body overseeing bedoons claims that it has material evidence that thousands of bedoons have other nationalities, and accordingly have lost the right to claim citizenship.