Kuwait’s opposition won a majority in the country’s new parliament in elections that saw gains for Islamists and a defeat for liberals and women, Bloomberg reported.

Opposition supporters won at least 32 seats, up from about 20 in the previous National Assembly, according to official results released today. Women, who in May 2009 won their first four seats in the 50-member assembly, lost all four of them. Islamist politicians from Kuwait’s Sunni Muslim community took more than 20 seats, and four of the seven successful Shiite candidates were Islamists.

“It’s beyond all expectations, we have extremism on all fronts and it’s going to be very explosive,” said Abdullah Al- Shayji, chairman of the political science department at Kuwait University. Islamists “will run the show, they will control the tempo. The government will have a hard time dealing with this.”

Repeated clashes between lawmakers and the government over how to share power have led to a series of parliament dissolutions and Cabinet resignations in OPEC’s fourth-biggest oil producer, slowing economic growth and delaying key investment projects.

The election, the fourth in less than six years, followed months of unprecedented anti-government demonstrations sparked by corruption allegations against Sheikh Nasser Al- Mohammed Al-Sabah, who quit as prime minister in November. That prompted Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, his uncle, to dissolve parliament and call elections.