KUWAIT CITY -
Two Kuwaiti opposition MPs on Wednesday filed separate requests to
question the interior and public works ministers over allegations of
financial and administrative irregularities.
Mussallam al-Barrak
asked to grill Interior Minister Sheikh Jaber Khaled al-Sabah, a member
of Kuwait's ruling family, for allegedly misleading parliament by
providing false information during an earlier grilling in June.
A
fellow MP, Mubarak al-Waalan, demanded to question in parliament Public
Works and Municipalities Minister Fadhel Safar over alleged financial
and administrative irregularities at the two ministries.
Sabah
survived a no-confidence motion after a grilling in June when he was
accused of squandering public funds by awarding a 19-million-dollar
contract to a local private firm in violation of local laws and at a
highly inflated cost.
The interior minister denied any
wrongdoing, saying he had referred the controversial contract to the
public prosecutor for a probe.
But Barrak said in his latest
motion that the minister had survived only because he had provided
parliament with misleading information about the public prosecution
probe.
Barrak, a member of the opposition Popular Action Bloc,
had repeatedly called on the interior minister to quit to avoid being
questioned again.
Meanwhile, MP Waalan accused the public works
minister of committing a series of administrative violations by
illegally promoting and appointing employees, and of having awarded
illegal contracts.
The new grillings are expected to strain the already tense relationship between parliament and the government.
On
Sunday, Islamist MP Faisal al-Muslim filed a request to question Prime
Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammad al-Ahmad al-Sabah on allegations his
office had misused public funds and for issuing a 700,000-dollar cheque
to a former MP.
The three grillings are expected to be debated on December 8.
OPEC
member Kuwait has been embroiled in political instability that has led
to the dissolving of parliament three times and the cabinet's
resignation five times since February 2006.
A number of MPs on
Tuesday blamed alleged feuding between members of the ruling Al-Sabah
family for political instability in this oil-rich Gulf state.