Rough-and-Tumble Democracy Has Kuwait Edgy : Middle East: The emirate’s vigorous new Parliament is asserting its independence more each day. Some worry it’s moving too far, too fast.

The first order of business in this nation’s new bastion of democracy was an angry protest from the emirate’s powerful defense minister, a cousin of the ruling emir.

Accusations from a member of the National Assembly that a high-ranking official of his ministry took $100 million in bribes on defense contracts were, to say the least, inappropriate, Sheik Ali al Salim al Sabah, the royally appointed defense minister, insisted early this week.

But within an hour or so, he found himself under attack on the Assembly floor, where another elected member challenged his plans to spend $12 billion to rebuild Kuwait’s armed forces while relying too heavily on American and European defense treaties.

This was a mild day in the new house that Kuwaiti democracy built.

In a region where autocrats long have ruled, Kuwait last fall broke the region’s democracy barrier, electing a 50-member legislature that is asserting its independence more and more each day.

The National Assembly has unmasked alleged crooks in government, exposed national scandals amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, challenged Kuwait’s long-ruling royal family and sent shock waves rippling through the other monarchies that continue to control the oil-rich nations of the Persian Gulf.

Just this week, there was even a fistfight on the Parliament floor between a legislator and a reporter who had insulted him by writing that the deputy had taken his secretary as his second wife, then granted her a leave of absence.

So quickly has Kuwait’s National Assembly expanded the democratic space it earned in landmark elections that Kuwaiti intellectuals now fear the Parliament and an equally freed national press are moving too far, too fast. They worry over a possible repetition of the decree by Kuwait’s royal family that dissolved the last elected Parliament for just such public free-for-alls in 1986.

“I’m afraid that this Assembly, in its very energetic crusade to uncover, to unmask and to reform, is going faster than the government would like,” said Prof. Abdullah Alshayeji, head of Kuwait University’s political science department and now a consultant to the new legislature. “The government is really being lynched by the Assembly, and when you’re being lynched you’re not going to enjoy it. The government can put up with this cold war for a while, but, for the first time, there’s talk around the country that this Assembly could be suspended.”

But Western diplomats monitoring the move toward democracy, which Washington demanded of the royal family after the U.S.-led war to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation, strongly doubt that the Assembly will be dissolved.

They insist that Sheik Jabbar al Ahmed al Sabah, Kuwait’s ruling emir, and his brother--Kuwait’s crown prince and appointed prime minister, who often must ardently defend the government on the Assembly floor--are irreversibly committed to their country’s experiment with democracy.

“I really don’t have any fears that a line is being crossed by the Parliament,” one diplomat said. “And I think even the senior-most members of the Cabinet want this Parliament. It’s very healthy for the (royal) family. There are now six Cabinet ministers from the elected body. So, it’s now a situation where, when things go wrong, the blame can be shared more equally.”

Diplomats and Alshayeji agree that the strongest fears born of Kuwait’s strong new Assembly should be felt not in Kuwait but in neighboring autocratic regimes--in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. There, long-ruling monarchies have refused to cede even a fraction of their power.

“It certainly already is giving some hope and some ambition to others in the Persian Gulf, intellectuals and others who are saying, ‘If Kuwait can do what they’re trying to do, there’s hope for all of us,’ ” the diplomat added. “I truly believe the next generation is going to look back and see the effects of this Kuwaiti Parliament on the growth of democracy in this part of the world.”

Oman and Bahrain are struggling toward democratic reform, having inaugurated appointed or partially elected legislative bodies in the months since Kuwait’s elections. Although they deny that events in Kuwait are influencing their policies, other Gulf officials concede that the global trend toward democracy has become irreversible in this area too.

“This region is moving, and the tide is moving,” said Tarik Moayyid, Bahrain’s information minister. “Those who don’t move with it will lose their heads. Those who do change with it will prosper, along with their people.”

Asked whether the Kuwaiti legislature is helping to drive that trend, Moayyid said, “No. Kuwait has been through a traumatic experience. It is not a model. It will not be followed by anybody.”

But Kuwaiti analysts, like Alshayeji, disagree. “We are an inspirational force for the other Gulf countries, although clearly their governments may deny it,” he said. “But we have to be very careful. We are not politically and democratically entrenched here. There’s a lack of political consciousness. And the intelligentsia in Kuwait is very concerned now.

“The people are saying, ‘What has the Assembly done for me as a Kuwaiti? They haven’t gotten me a higher salary. They haven’t helped me get my house in seven years instead of 12.’ I’m really concerned now. Some people are starting to say this summer may be the turning point.”

At the heart of the concerns is a bitter, continuing debate about the real intent of a large bloc of Islamic fundamentalists elected to the Assembly last fall, 40% of the body’s membership.

Increasingly, the Islamicists vote together on issues. Though the group has stopped far short of introducing harsh proposals to strictly implement Islamic Sharia law, the nation’s newspapers, controlled largely by secularists or the government, have begun a crusade against the Islamic bloc.

It was just that crusade that Alshayeji and several Assembly members said boiled over into the recent fistfight between an Islamicist Assembly member and a secular newspaper columnist.

Such public confrontations are viewed by most Western observers as healthy indicators of the changes that have swept this society, in which, just two years ago, most Kuwaitis feared even to speak out in public.

Most Kuwaitis interviewed in recent days said they and their countrymen are willing to overlook the occasional scuffle and acrimony in their new democratic institutions in favor of the positive forces they have created within Kuwait’s postwar society.

Kuwaitis have high praise, for example, for the role the Assembly and press have created as watchdogs of a royal family and an appointed government that once spent, invested and, some critics say, squandered billions of dollars of the emirate’s vast oil income.

Among the Assembly disclosures in the months since it began examining what was once an $80-billion investment portfolio and a $6-billion-a-year national income are alleged kickback schemes in the long-secretive, London-based Kuwait Investment Office; the state-run oil tanker corporation; and, this week, in the traditionally sacred defense procurement ministry run by the ruling emir’s cousin.

As a result of Assembly queries, a senior official of the tanker company has been arrested; several top officers of the investment office are living abroad in self-imposed exile; and government sources said they expect as many as 10 top officials of the state companies that handled government funds will be charged with corruption in the next few weeks.

“The good thing in Kuwait now is you can investigate almost anything and anyone, and you can reach a conclusion,” said Jassem Saddoun, a prominent Kuwaiti economist, fierce government opponent and now an unpaid consultant to the Assembly’s powerful finance committee.

“This is a very healthy process,” he added. “And I think that even the Parliament knows they should stop somewhere. Up to that point, it’s OK. But if it goes any further, the pressure from inside and outside Kuwait will mount and it will stop right there. Of course, we are not totally in a democratic situation. But I think we’re off to a very good start.”