ShareKUWAIT: The election campaign became very intense in the past few days with opposition hopefuls and pro-government candidates trading accusations of corruption and conspiracies. Opposition candidates focused their attention on members of the previous assembly and its speaker Marzouk Al-Ghanem and urged the voters not to allow any of the previous assembly members to come back.
They accused them of being a rubber stamp for the government which passed a large number of legislation without any resistance. Ghanem hit back at an election rally on Tuesday saying he was the target of a gang that has been plotting to take over the government accusing two senior members of the ruling family of masterminding the gang.
The opposition has started a campaign against the election of Ghanem as a speaker for the next assembly and several candidates have already pledged to vote against him. The opposition has also strongly criticized Interior Minister Sheikh Mohammad Al-Khaled Al-Sabah and two leading opposition candidates and former MPs Mubarak Al-Waalan and Salem Al-Namlan already vowed that they will grill him if they get elected. Waalan accused the interior minister of revoking the citizenships of several opposition figures and their families and for deporting Saad Al-Ajmi after stripping him of his nationality.
In the meantime, candidates running for the national assembly election on Saturday will make their final election rallies today ahead of the polls silence the following day. So far, 287 hopefuls including 13 women are left in the race while the cassation court is still reviewing the cases of 21 candidates who have been disqualified by the election committee and the cassation court prevented their re-instatement until it issues its verdicts.
The court, whose rulings are final, met for several hours yesterday and decided that it will issue its verdicts on all the cases today. Those barred include former MPs Safa Al-Hashem and Bader Al-Dahoum. Originally, the election committee disqualified 47 candidates and only cases reached the court of cassation.
