National Assembly of Kuwait

Hi Everyone! Sorry got disappeared for few days. Actually my brother was here for 10days, so I got very busy taking him around Kuwait. So I will be updating about the places we visited in Kuwait (which I had scribbled in my diary but could not find time to enter in my blog).

We had been to Kuwait city several times but could not get a nice picture of Kuwait's Parliament building. This time I could get one, which my brother took from his mobile.

The National Assembly of Kuwait, known as the Majlis Al-Umma ("House of the Nation"‎), is the legislature of Kuwait. The current speaker of the Assembly is Jassem Al-Kharafi. The Emir unconstitutionally dissolved the National Assembly in 1986 and restored it after the Gulf War in 1992. The Emir has also constitutionally dissolved the Assembly several times--meaning that he dissolved it but allowed for elections immediately afterward.

Until recently, suffrage was limited to male Kuwaiti citizens above the age of 21 whose ancestors had resided in Kuwait since 1920, and adult males who have been naturalized citizens for at least 20 years. On May 16, 2005, however, the Assembly passed a law in support of women's suffrage, allowing women to vote and run for office, as long as they adhere to Islamic law.

The fifty-seat assembly is elected every four years. Currently there are five geographically distributed electoral districts. Every eligible citizen is entitled to four votes, though he or she may choose to only cast one vote. The ten candidates with the most votes in each district win seats. Cabinet ministers (including the prime minister) are granted automatic membership in the Assembly, which increases the number of members in the assembly from fifty to sixty-six. The Cabinet ministers have the same rights as the elected MPs except that: they do not participate in committees' work, and  they cannot vote when an interpolation leads to a "no-confidence" vote against one of the Cabinet members.
The parliament building was designed by the famous Danish architect Jørn Utzon, who also designed the Sydney Opera House.

First Women Win Seats in Kuwait Parliament ..... For detail news check the news item http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/world/middleeast/18kuwait.html