Kuwait: The administrative court on Thursday barred former opposition MP Bader Al-Dahoum from running in the upcoming elections after rejecting his petition to reenlist him on the election rolls. The court also rejected the appeals of 35 other voters who were not listed by the ministry of interior for a variety of reasons. The court is expected to continue looking into more petitions in the coming days.

Dahoum was elected to the National Assembly in the previous elections on Dec 5, 2020. A year later, the constitutional court, whose rulings are final, disqualified his election win based on a law that bars people convicted on political cases from running in polls. Dahoum said on Twitter that he will challenge the verdict at the court of cassation, the top court in the country, because the verdict violated a previous ruling issued by the court of cassation allowing him to run in polls in 2020.

After the court completes looking into the election petitions, the election decree setting the date for the upcoming Assembly polls will be issued and published in the official gazette early next week. When the decree is published in the gazette, the election department of the interior ministry will start from the next day the registration of candidates who wish to run for the 50 seats in the Assembly.

The registration of candidates continues for 10 days. The door for withdrawals will then open until seven days before the election date, expected to be on Sept 29. Top candidates including former MPs have already announced they are running in elections. They include veteran opposition leader and former three-time speaker Ahmad Al-Saadoun, 87, who is expected to contest the speaker’s post if he wins a seat.

Other candidates who said they are running include MP Obaid Al-Wasmi, who left the opposition ranks to form an alliance with the previous government and former speaker Marzouq Al-Ghanem. Former MPs Abdulkarim Al-Kandari, Abdullah Al-Kandari, Osama Al-Shaheen, Abdullah Al-Saqabi, Askar Al-Enezi, Hamad Al-Matar, Musaed Al-Mutairi, Osama Al-Munawer and many others have announced they are bidding for re-election. Kuwait, with a population of 1.42 million, has some 800,000 eligible voters, half of them women. The country is divided into five electoral constituencies, each electing 10 lawmakers.