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Woman makes strong show but fails to win seat in Kuwait polls
AFP, April, 2006
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KUWAIT CITY (AFP) — Tribesman candidate Yussef al-Suwaileh comfortably won a Kuwaiti municipal council by-election but one of two women contesting the polls for the first time ever came in second place.
Suwaileh, solidly backed by the largest Kuwaiti Bedouin tribe of Awazem, received 5,436 votes while Jenan Bushehri, who made history by becoming the first Kuwaiti woman to announce her candidacy for public office, unexpectedly polled 1,807 votes.
The other female candidate, Khaleda al-Khader, however received just 79 votes and came in eighth and last place.
Judge Faisal al-Khuraibet, who supervised the elections, said that 10,646 voters cast their ballots out of 28,200 eligible voters of whom 60 percent were women, a low turnout of 38 percent.
The turnout among women, who participated in the elections for the first time, was around 30 percent, according to unofficial figures.
Bushehri, a 33-year-old ...
