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Jun. 26--KUWAIT -- Some 85 Kuwaiti women have already booked with Jazeera Airways to take advantage of the Kuwait-based airline's offer to fly them home free so they may vote in the country's June 29 parliamentary elections.
On June 18, the Middle East's first privately owned airline Jazeera Airways announced they would fly any Kuwaiti woman eligible to vote back to Kuwait for free, as part of their two-day 'Come Home To Vote' initiative.
Speaking to the Kuwait Times yesterday Fawaz Al-Sirri, communications and image manager with Jazeera Airways said that "the bulk of the women" that had booked to fly to Kuwait with Jazeera Airways were returning from Dubai and Bahrain. There were also bookings made from other destinations in the Middle East. Jazeera Airways flies to nine destinations in six countries in the Middle East.
Speaking about the airline's initiative, Jazeera Airways chairman and CEO Marwan Boodai said in a statement, "Our initiative is to ensure that all Kuwaiti women who are eligible to vote, exercise their democratic right in line with the new legislation. We want to ensure that as many women as possible have can return to Kuwait to vote in these historic elections, as part of Jazeera Airways' national social responsibility program."
He added, "As a national airline in Kuwait, we believe it's our role to encourage women to come home to vote. Who they vote for is entirely up to them, we just want to make sure that they are given every opportunity to return home, without cost or expense to exercise their democratic right to vote."
Thirty women candidates are among about 340 candidates running for the 50-seat parliament. The women are the first to run for parliament for the first time in the history of Kuwait after the National Assembly granted women the right to vote and to run for public office in May last year. The total number of eligible voters in Kuwait is 340,000, out of whom 195,000 (57 per cent) are women.
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