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KUWAIT (Reuters) – Kuwait’s new emir on Wednesday appointed veteran security officer Sheikh Meshaal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah as crown prince, leaving power in the hands of senior members of the ruling family in a sign that the OPEC member country is unlikely to seek radical change.
The National Assembly, or parliament, must approve the selection of Sheikh Meshaal, who is in his 80s and as deputy chief of the National Guard and is the oldest of several figures who were hesitant to nominate the position.
The Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) quoted a statement by Amiri Diwan as saying that “the honorable Al Sabah family has blessed the recommendation” of Sheikh Meshaal.
The new Emir Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah assumed power after the death of his half brother Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad last week, at a time of tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran, Kuwait’s neighbors, and the government attempts strengthen its financial conditions affected by the fall in oil prices and the Corona virus pandemic.
Diplomats and analysts say 83-year-old Sheikh Nawwaf, who is out of the limelight and his age, could pressure him to transfer more responsibilities to his potential heir, who will have to act quickly to address domestic issues.
The president of the National Assembly had said that if the emir of the country announced on Wednesday the selection of a crown prince, the deputies would vote on his election on Thursday, the last day of the legislature.
Sheikh Meshaal, who is also the half-brother of the country’s late Emir, became deputy chief of the National Guard in 2004 and was head of the State Security Service for 13 years. Experts in Kuwait said that he had previously refused to fill the highest positions offered to him and that he had steered clear of political conflict and public roles.
Sheikh Meshaal was accompanied by Sheikh Sabah on his trips to the United States in July, where the late prince remained in a hospital until his death at the age of 91.
Younger princes
The new emir is expected to maintain the oil policy as well as the foreign policy formulated by Sheikh Sabah, who fought for harmony among the Arabs and the establishment of balanced relations between Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq that Kuwait occupied in the past.
And Sheikh Meshaal assuming the Pact mandate in Kuwait will be in contrast to some other Gulf countries, notably Saudi Arabia, where ruling families began to award senior positions to younger princes.
On Wednesday, state television reported on Prince Sheikh Nawaf’s meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who arrived in Kuwait from Qatar to offer his condolences on the death of Sheikh Sabah.
Turkey supports Doha in a Gulf dispute that resulted in Saudi Arabia and its allies boycotting Qatar since mid-2017, in a bitter rift, which Sheikh Sabah tried to end, without success.
The Emir of Kuwait and the Crown Prince are expected to focus on internal affairs, as parliamentary elections are scheduled for this year as the government tries to address a liquidity crisis.
Diplomats and analysts also say that an urgent task is the debt law, which is facing resistance in the National Assembly and which would allow Kuwait to knock on the doors of international debt markets to help it finance the budget deficit.
Frequent clashes between the Council of Ministers and the National Assembly, the oldest and strongest parliament in the Gulf region, have led to successive ministerial reorganizations and the dissolution of parliament repeatedly, hampering investment and reform efforts.
(Press coverage of Dalia Nehme and Maher Shmaitly – Doaa Muhammad prepared for the Arab bulletin – Edited by Yasmine Hussein)
