On October 2, the London-based Al-Arab daily newspaper carried the following piece by Khayrallah Khayrallah: "While transparency was the headline of the parliamentary elections that took place in Kuwait in terms of the form, change was the headline of the outcomes in terms of the content where the proportion of change reached 54 percent. The elections resulted in a strong comeback for the former Speaker, Ahmad al-Saadoun, along with a number of MPs who are known for having done a good job in terms of legislation and surveillance…

"In conclusion, one can say that some oppositionists managed to maintain their seats. The number of Shi'i MPs increased from six in the past parliament to nine in this one. At the same time, the Muslim Brothers showed that they are good at the electoral game as they nominated some individuals while at the same time supporting other candidates without making this support public. Thus, three of the official candidates and two of the unannounced ones won… The beautiful part is that two women also reached the parliament…

"There are many factors that led to these results. One must say that Kuwait has always offered a successful model for running and organizing the electoral process… One of the healthy phenomena is that 305 candidates including 22 women competed for the parliament's fifty seats. The elections in Kuwait are no longer an objective for political leadership. They are rather one of many tools that shall modify the political scene in Kuwait in the next years…

"The world is changing and so is the region. Thus, it is no longer possible for the train of development in Kuwait to remain inactive… Kuwait has always truly been a lighthouse for the Gulf in all different areas. It was a pioneer in intellectual, cultural, artistic, scientific, and social enlightenment. However, Kuwait was affected by a number of external factors like the Iranian-Iraqi war between 1980 and 1988, the Iraqi invasion in August 1990, and the threats by the Saddam Hussein regime that lasted for more than ten years.

"These factors do not mean that there were no internal factors… The internal political currents serve to consolidate an erroneous approach on the level of the relationship between the parliament and the cabinet. Some cabinets also contributed to consolidating this mistake… Regardless of whether the new parliament has understood the contents of the change message raised by the political leadership…, the ongoing developments in Kuwait are different compared to the past situation… In other words, there are some parties in Kuwait who refuse to be caught in some labyrinths that only lead to wasting time…"