And striving towards a better future in which the country will enjoy more comfort and international status, and grant its citizens more political freedom, equality and social justice, establish the pillars of pride in the dignity of the individual, eagerness for the interest of the community and consultation in government towards which the Arabs are inclined, while preserving the unity and stability of the country;

And after examining Law No. 1 of 1962 on the constitution of government in the period of transition, and on the basis of what the Constituent Assembly has resolved, we have assented to this Constitution and promulgated it.

These words come at the beginning of the Constitution of the State of Kuwait, whose Amir Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem Al-Sabah signed it on 11 November 1962, thereby recording one of the most important political events in the history of Kuwait, one year after it became independent and emerged from under the cloak of British protection.

This occasion also registered an important turning-point in the Arabian Gulf region, which at that time was searching for its identity and self-determination. It introduced the word democracy, which some people still reject without trying it, or are afraid of it even before they know what it means, into the political dictionary of the region.

Forty years have passed over us in the age of the democratic experiment in Kuwait. It is worth remembering the challenges which this experiment has been confronted, and the crises to which it has been exposed, particularly since one of these crises almost wiped Kuwait off the map, had it not been for the will of its people who held fast to the legitimacy of their existence on this small patch of land, and had it not been for the firm attitude adopted by the international community in supporting the right of Kuwait and in defense of it.

The Kuwaiti Constitution was not born of that moment in the 1960s, but was the product of a heritage of interaction and creative argument between the people of Kuwait and those in power from the Sabah family. It can be said that the way of life and the hardship in it that can only be endured by all elements of society helping and supporting each other enabled them the rulers and the ruled to arrive at that rare formula of agreement. I mean by that the formula of joint rule in which responsibility was exchanged between the two sides without a written contract. This situation continued to prevail for many years, and it was only destined to take its final form in the provisions of the Constitution.

Three elements co-operated to accomplish the Constitution in these circumstances. They coincided and intermeshed by the action of chance events of history: a conscious will of the people, an Amir who faced the wind of change with an open and understanding mind, and external circumstances surrounded by dangers and ambitions.

A Testimony for Liberty

I do not want to be a witness for the people of Kuwait as I am one of them, but I make use here of the testimony of the Egyptian scholar Dr. Ahmad Zaki, who was the first Editor-in-Chief of Al-Arabi magazine, and who himself witnessed the events of the two occasions, independence and the birth of the Constitution. Regarding the Kuwaiti people s feeling of desire for liberty, he says, This land since ancient times was a land of commerce, and commerce only grows on freedom. It only grows and prospers on truthfulness and honesty. We heard of commerce in this land, the land of Kuwait, at the beginning of this century. They would exchange contracts and loans verbally, and that would be instead of a written cheque. The sailors were just like the merchants, the sea was open with a broad horizon. A seafarer would not go as the sea wished, but as he wished, and in this confirmation of an individual s will were the risks of the sea and a narrowing of the gap between life and death.

Thus the Kuwaitis lived in spite of their harsh conditions before oil started flowing and they had nothing but freedom and the will to survive. It was natural that this will should have the major aspect in guiding their lives, that they should agree to a formula of joint rule with their rulers from early on, in 1896, and that this formula should develop into a demand for popular participation in a famous memorandum presented by leading personalities of Kuwait in 1921. Then this desire by the people continued and developed with the emergence of the class of merchants and educated people among the people of Kuwait, into the election of the first Legislative Assembly in 1938. This was regarded as the first pioneer democratic experiment in the Gulf region, indeed it preceded many similar experiments in the Arab world.

The Father of the Constitution

Nothing is more indicative of those who ruled in Kuwait than the personality of Abdullah Al-Salem, the Amir who signed the Constitution and assented to it without making any amendment to it. His nickname before he became Amir was the Father of Kuwait , because he began his life in public service taking care of orphan children in Kuwait. Then, when he assumed the reins of responsibility, he became the Father of the Constitution . This was not a sudden change, of course. From early on, Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem was known for his enlightened and reformist tendencies, even before he became Amir. This is what led him always to be always on the side of the patriotic forces which rose up in 1938 to demand administrative and political reform. Dr. Ahmad Al-Baghdadi, in his book about the Sheikh s life, states: With that, Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem placed himself in sharp confrontation with his ruling family, bearing in mind that the position of the ruling family was at that time regarded as natural and spontaneous. But Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem preferred to act according to his own convictions with regard to the people s right to have their say in the affairs of the country. This explains why he prevented a prior agreement with the demands of the National Bloc which was made up of the leading personalities of Kuwait who were calling for national reform.

Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem did not adopt these patriotic attitudes of confronting the reservations of some leaders of the ruling family only, but also adopted them in the face of the British authorities who were dominating the destiny of the region at that time. When elections were held for the first Legislative Assembly in 1938, the Sheikh sympathized with the right of the Assembly to control and decide on everything related to the sovereignty of Kuwait. He paid no attention to the anger of Britain, which considered that the Assembly was contesting its authority, particularly in the sphere of Kuwait s foreign relations, which it always regarded as its own business. He was the type of man who carries his own dreams and does not swerve from them in the face of difficulties. Because of that he was aware when he assumed responsibility that his dream of a constitution and the return of democratic life to Kuwait must be postponed a while until the ground could be prepared for it both politically and socially. Deep inside he had the experience of the parliamentary experiment of 1938, and how short-lived it was because it had not been properly prepared. He aspired for the preparation to be made for a long-lived democratic experiment with profound effects.

Popular Effort

At the beginning of the 1960s the moment had arrived. In spite of that the Constitution was not laid down by order from above, but was prepared through popular effort which included all the conscious national forces in Kuwait. A Constituent Assembly was elected by the people by direct suffrage to prepare it. This Assembly held 22 consecutive sessions, in which free, open debates were held they were sometimes sharp to study every one of the Constitution s provisions. Indeed, the Ministers whom the government had nominated as members of the Constituent Assembly as its representatives abstained from voting on the articles of the Constitution, leaving the elected members full scope for expression of opinions. The provisions of the Constitution came in 183 articles. The Amir of the country did not object to a single one of them, but hastened to sign it without amending any of its articles, since the representatives of the people wanted it thus, according to the evidence of Dr. Othman Khalil Othman, the constitutional expert who came from Cairo to take part in the legal drafting of the Constitution. He was astonished by that open-minded feeling of the Amir of Kuwait, and conveyed it to us in those words.

Perhaps the constitutions in many parts of the world resemble each other, because they have the status of a binding legal contract between the rulers and the ruled, and define the dividing lines between rights and duties. But the fact remains that each constitution has its own particular character, which derives from the particular character of the country that produced it and the aim for which its drafters were striving. The Kuwaiti Constitution is no exception to this rule. The Amir of the country in whose reign the Constitution was promulgated said; The Constitution which we have promulgated is no more than a legal arrangement of the customs applied in Kuwait. The government in this country has always been consultation among its people. In its preamble it affirmed faith in the role of Kuwait in the course of Arab nationalism, the political liberty of its citizens, equality, social justice, dignity of the individual and the interest of the community, and stressed the system of consultation in government with the preservation of the unity and stability of the homeland.

The Pressure of External Circumstance

This difficult birth of the Constitution was surrounded by more difficult circumstances from outside Kuwait. The country was under pressure from a horrifying crisis into which it was dragged by the Iraqi regime led by Abdulkarim Qasim from 1958 to 1963. He found Kuwait s independence from Britain a suitable opportunity to reveal his designs against the State of Kuwait. He began to move his forces towards its northern border, and to boycott every state that recognized the independence of Kuwait, and even withdrew from the League of Arab States because it accepted Kuwait to join it. In the midst of these insults and threats, Kuwait rallied round its popular leadership as it has always been accustomed to do, continued to build its independence and support its political system. The most eloquent proof of its cohesion and perseverance was the birth of the Constitution and the continuity of democracy in the face of all the uproar raised by the regime in Iraq.

The Winds of Democracy

The achievement of the Constitution was only a small step on the long road of democracy. Although Kuwait had chosen a compromise appropriate to its local circumstances, these changes were part of the powerful wind of change that was sweeping the world after the Second World War and the dismantling of the structure of colonialism in its traditional form. Historians of political science classify the development of democracy in the world in the framework of three waves: the first wave was in the wake of the French and American Revolutions, when the world freed itself from the old aristocratic classes and the pillars of the ruling monarchies, which believed that they were God s shadow on Earth, were shaken, and the role of the middle-class bourgeoisie came to the fore, bringing the concepts of liberty, equality and fraternity. This established the rule of deep-rooted democracies in France, England and America. The second wave of democracy only arose somewhat later, in the wake of the Second World War, roughly in the middle of the twentieth century. In this the former colonies freed themselves, and the dream of the nation-state and national identity emerged. It became the dream of every ethnic group to have its recognized borders. Kuwait was one of the foremost Arab states to be affected by this wave, perhaps because it had the healthiest structure at that time. It did not suffer from the effects of totalitarian rule or the deformities of military coups. Indeed, the principle of government by participation was firmly established in the emotions of both the rulers and the ruled. Consequently it accepted the wind of democracy in its true sense. The third wave of democracy came in the 1980s with the fall of the Soviet Union, the collapse of dictatorships in Eastern Europe and Latin America and the emergence of a new intellectual tide which insisted on individual freedom and human rights. Perhaps the most insistent question for us now is: what is our share as Arabs in these successive waves?

It is regrettable that we never felt the first wave of democracy, because the Arab world at that time was under the control of the Ottoman Caliphate, which not only banned the printing press and books, but also turned religion into a repressive authority against everyone who thought of departing from the concept of the Caliphate. The second wave came when we were under the oppression of Western colonialism. After independence the Arab world entered whirlpools of totalitarian rule from which it still has not woken up. It proclaimed slogans about applying democracy throughout the successive phases of national rule, with very little being achieved from them.

Violent winds of change led the third wave a long way, to Latin America, whose dictatorial regimes collapsed and whose most famous symbols were killed. But they were at their weakest when they blew on our Arab world. Consequently our share of them was very little. Some Arab regimes allowed the principle of political pluralism, but they never allowed alternation in power. They allowed a little opportunity for the growth of non-governmental organizations, but they never widened the scope for the growth of civic society organizations, nor did they allow them to influence their political decisions. Thus the wind came weak, and the change occurred incomplete.

Following democratic systems in Latin America has led to a halt in the wave of military coups, the domination of generals and their struggles for power, whereas many individual regimes are still controlling power in most of the Arab countries. The terrifying caricature with which Latin American writers used to portray the ruling dictator has disappeared, but this image remains with all its details in some Arab countries. The example of Iraq is the best evidence of what I say. The Eastern European countries have rid themselves of movements of dissidents and opponents, while Arab opposition movements have been forced to go underground. They have established secret organizations and turned to violence and harshness in the political activity, indeed they have come to believe that massacres are the only way to change the regimes which have lasted far longer than they should.

Democracy and Rationality

I do not want to claim that the experiment was an ideal one, or that it was isolated from the general experience of the Arab world, which the recent report on human development has confirmed is suffering from three gaps: a gap in the enjoyment of liberty, a gap in denying women their role in development, and a gap in the society of knowledge. But what I want to say is that forty years of the experiment of working according to the Kuwaiti constitution and of following the principle of participation in government has not been a loss or a waste of time. The political system in Kuwait received its reward for embracing the democratic way, during the August 1990 crisis. At a time when the Iraqi invasion forces overran Kuwait, to fulfill Abdulkarim Qasim s threats which he had made in the 1960, the whole Kuwaiti people rallied around their symbols of legitimacy in Taif. It was a new oath of allegiance and another contract by all sectors of the people, without limits. This popular mandate gave the regime in Kuwait the legitimacy which backed up international recognition for legitimate rights, and provided the government with the opportunity and the ability to conduct the battle for the liberation of Kuwait.

In the Kuwaiti experiment over the span of four years, some of the essence of democracy has been achieved which lies in the principle of sovereignty of the people. It proves that the government here not only derives its legitimacy from the will of those whom it rules, but also has the instruments to know what the people really want. That was clearly apparent during the invasion, and during the liberation. It can be said that the system of government in Kuwait was reborn after this crisis. A family no longer merely inherited power, so much as it became part of the fabric of the Kuwaiti people. This confirms that the bet on democracy is beneficial not only for the people, but also for the rulers, and a safety valve for states and nations.

When we dream of the wind of democracy blowing over our Arab world, we do not want that as a luxury or out of love for ballot boxes, or even to decrease the absolute power of some Arab regimes. But democracy according to political thinker Gia Nodia is a project with a high degree of rationality, and this is something that we really lack in our Arab life. It considers that society is established by free individuals aware of their interests, and they draw up the principles which safeguard these interests. Hence any thinking that is not rational, such as the monopolization of power by specific individuals, or a specific class or even a specific tendency, is thinking hostile to democracy. All the insane, perverted and distorted conduct that our Arab world witnesses is a result of that irrational condition in which we live. The gap of the lack of freedom will not only widen, and women also will not only turn into marginal creatures, but the gap between us and the knowledgeable societies to which the world aspires and which enable it to progress will also grow wider.