Nasser Al Sabah

Early life

Sheikh Nasser was born on 22 December 1940 as the son of Mohammed Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, the first defense minister of Kuwait. He is the nephew of the Emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah. He attended high school in the United Kingdom and graduated in 1959. Then he received a higher diploma in the French language in 1960. In 1964, Sheikh Nasser graduated from the University of Geneva (Switzerland) with a bachelor's degree in political science and economics.

Career

Sheikh Nasser began his career as a third secretary at the foreign ministry in 1964. He became a member of the permanent Kuwaiti delegation at the United Nations in New York in October 1964. He then served as ambassador to Iran and Afghanistan, the minister of information, minister of social affairs and labour, minister of state for foreign affairs and minister of the Emiri Diwan. He became prime minister when Sabah Al Ahmad began to rule Kuwait in February 2006.

Sheikh Nasser resigned on 4 March 2007 in a move observers believe was aimed at avoiding a no-confidence motion against health minister Sheikh Ahmad Al-Abdullah Al-Sabah. Ten MPs presented the motion in February over suspected financial and administrative breaches at the ministry. The vote was due to have taken place in parliament on 5 March and Sheikh Ahmad would have had to step down if legislators had voted against him. He was reappointed as prime minister on 6 March.

On 25 November, the cabinet resigned, and on 17 December the Emir reappointed Nasser as prime minister of the new cabinet. In March 2009, the Kuwaiti Government submitted its resignation to the Emir of Kuwait after Islamist MPs requested a hearing of the P.M. On 9 May, after the election of the new Parliament, the Emir asked Sheikh Nasser to form the Kuwaiti Government for the sixth consecutive time. The new Government maintained supremacy of the Al-Ahmed Branch of the Al-Sabah Family.

In December 2009, opposition members of parliament filed a motion of "non-cooperation" against Sheikh Nasser over corruption charges. Allegations were that his office misappropriated millions of dollars in the run up to the 2008 elections, and a $700,000 cheque issued to an MP in 2008.

In January 2011, he survived a vote of no-confidence in parliament with a vote of 25–25 (26 were needed to bring down the Government). In April 2011, his cabinet resigned due to a stand-off with parliament; he was reappointed on 6 April 2011 to form a new government, but he resigned again on 28 November 2011. His resignation was accepted by the Emir and he appointed Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Hamad Al-Sabah as next prime minister on 4 December 2011.

Dispute with Speaker Al-Kharafi

On 3 November 2007, Parliamentary Speaker Jassem Al-Kharafi told the pan-Arab Arabiya television in an interview that he had "question marks" about the Prime Minister's decisions. A transcript of the interview was published in Alrai daily, which included Al-Kharafi's comment that too many reshuffles necessitate "a review and an evaluation of what measures should be taken." Al-Kharafi said the reshuffle should not have been put off for the whole summer and that it indicated a "policy of patching" up problems, rather than solving them.

In response, Prime Minister Nasser issued a statement about Al-Kharafi to the state-owned Kuwait News Agency, which was splashed on the front pages of daily newspapers. In the statement, PM Nasser said that Al-Kharafi was overstepping in bounds in trying to influence cabinet selections: "I have no doubt that .... the speaker realizes that his attempts to interfere in forming the Cabinet and affecting its decisions is overstretching his constitutional mandate." The back-and-forth marked the first such public tensions between a speaker and a prime Minister.

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