Kuwait - Good news for Muslim women

It's taken a long time, but Muslim women in Kuwait can now vote.

Oh, you didn't know they couldn't vote in the first place.

WOMEN made history in Kuwait yesterday by voting and running for office for the first time in a local by-election after the conservative, US-allied Gulf state granted them suffrage last year.

Polls opened at 8am (0500 GMT) for the vote to fill a single seat in the Municipal Council, a 16-member body. The rest of the members were elected and appointed last year.

"Today is the biggest feast we have been waiting for for more than 40 years," Khaleda al-Khadher, one of the two female candidates, told Reuters at a polling station in Salwa suburb.

"This is the first time Kuwaiti women can show the men that we are capable, it is important that we do our best and leave the outcome of the polls to God," added Khadher, wearing a conservative black Islamic-style dress.

Some 28,000 voters, including 16,000 women, are eligible to cast ballots for the eight candidates, who include two women.

Last May, parliament passed a government-sponsored bill granting suffrage to women who had fought for their political rights for more than four decades.

We've a long way to go yet.
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