Bahrain’s main Shiite party boycotts parliament inauguration
The Associated Press
Friday, December 15, 2006
MANAMA, Bahrain
Bahrain’s main Shiite opposition party boycotted the king’s inauguration of parliament Friday, protesting what it called the “marginalization” of the country’s Shiite majority.
The leader of Al-Wefaq, which won 43 percent of the assembly’s 40 seats in the November elections, said the party might boycott working sessions of the parliament unless the government addresses its demands.
Sheik Ali Salman said the party’s members had decided on Friday’s boycott, “and it might go on depending on developments.” He warned the parliament might “lose its legitimacy” if it held sessions indefinitely without the participation of al-Wefaq legislators.
Bahrain’s main Shiite party boycotts parliament inauguration
The Associated Press
Friday, December 15, 2006
MANAMA, Bahrain
Bahrain’s main Shiite opposition party boycotted the king’s inauguration of parliament Friday, protesting what it called the “marginalization” of the country’s Shiite majority.
The leader of Al-Wefaq, which won 43 percent of the assembly’s 40 seats in the November elections, said the party might boycott working sessions of the parliament unless the government addresses its demands.
Sheik Ali Salman said the party’s members had decided on Friday’s boycott, “and it might go on depending on developments.” He warned the parliament might “lose its legitimacy” if it held sessions indefinitely without the participation of al-Wefaq legislators.
Al-Wefaq accused the government of depriving Shiites of their rights, in particular the post of parliamentary speaker. Shiites amount to more than 60 percent of Bahrain’s 700,000 people and have long complained they are squeezed out of power by the Sunni monarchy.
“Although al-Wefaq won 17 seats out of 40, the government formed a coalition among the other lawmakers to obtain a bigger block that had the right to elect the speaker,” said Abdul-Hadi al-Khawaja of the Bahraini Center for Human Rights, which is linked to al-Wefaq.
In a statement before the inauguration, al-Wefaq said it would stage a boycott because of the “marginalization policies that are being implemented in line with what had been revealed last September by Salah al-Bandar.”
A report distributed earlier this year by a former government consultant, Salah al-Bandar, alleged that top government officials were using accelerated naturalization and electronic voting, among other tactics, to rig the November elections in favor of the minority Sunnis.
The report, which came to be known as “Bandargate,” made big waves in the tiny Persian Gulf kingdom which hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet.
The government denied the report’s allegations. It charged al-Bandar, a Sunni Muslim, with sedition and expelled him from the country.
Al-Wefaq says that those responsible for the alleged plot to rig the elections have either been promoted or reinstated, and none have been punished.
Salman said that for al-Wefaq’s legislators to take their seats in parliament, the government would have to punish those responsible for Bandargate, hold a new election for speaker, and dismiss what he called the “unqualified” ministers in the Cabinet.
“We hope that there will be an agreement,” Salman said in a phone interview.
Following the Nov. 25 elections and Dec. 2 run-off, an election monitor in Bahrain said there was “circumstantial evidence” that pro-government Sunni Muslims used fraud to win a majority of the seats in the parliament.
The government banned international monitors from observing the vote, but Minister of Information Mohammed Abdel Ghaffar has downplayed previous reports of irregularities, saying the vote was largely fair and the problems were minor.
