Saddam Hussein decided erroneously that Kuwait could not manage itself, leading to Iraq’s invasion, says Shafeeq Ghabra, professor of political science at Kuwait University. Now that sense of mismanagement is returning. “Over the last 10 years or so, the executive branch has not been as efficient, as organized or as forward-looking as it used to be. And the parliament on the other hand has not been as organized, as unified but more faction-oriented and, at the same time, wanted to … advance to fill the vacuum left,” he says.

Considering a recent revision by The Economist Intelligence Unit that Ku-wait’s GDP will now grow by only 0.7 percent in 2009, the country’s economy is set to almost stagnate. The situation is likely to get worse in the long term as well, with a growing age gap between the increasingly youthful Kuwaiti population, and its rulers. In government, “minimum age requirements are becoming higher and higher. Whereas the reality on the ground is that they are getting younger and younger. And that contradiction also is an added burden on our political economic system. So there is a lot to be done in reform at the executive level,” Ghabra says.

The main worry this time is that failure will demonstrate repeated failure by the only democratic experiment in the GCC. Yet the impasse has less to do with democracy than it does with transparency in government and leadership. The only real solution is for the executive branch to stop acting like employees and more like leaders to resolve the crisis, Ghabra says. “If this does not happen and they end up unable to work with each other and undermine each other, this will fragment the executive branch,” he says.

This is leading to concerns within the country that the recurrent plague of political dissension is bringing Kuwait closer to a serious internal split within its borders. The state has experienced civil disorder and rioting on the streets before, and there is now a risk it will return. “Dissolving the parliament and going back in an unconstitutional way and without reform,” Ghabra says, “will bring Kuwait

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