KUWAIT CITY – Kuwait braced for demonstrations against the government on Tuesday as youth groups promised to take their campaign to oust the prime minister to the streets of the oil-rich emirate. The Fifth Fence youth group has been using microblogging website Twitter to urge its supporters to join a rally coinciding with parliament’s first meeting after a six-week break.
Opposition blocs representing Islamists, liberals and nationalists have separately demanded Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammad al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, the nephew of the emir, step down after five years on the job. “The first step toward reform is forming a new government under a new prime minister that should be capable of running the country and reforming imbalances,” the nationalist Popular Action Bloc said in a statement last week.
The protests come at a time of tumult and upheaval across the Middle East which has seen the veteran autocratic rulers of Egypt and Tunisia swept from power and threatened the regimes of Bahrain, Libya and Yemen.
