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sidered the frontrunner for the first deputy speaker post previously perhaps the most important result of today s vote was the leap of faith that iraqi politicians conducted despite wavering to the last minute shiites and kurds voted for the sunni islamist jibburi as speaker without any guarantees regarding the deputy speakers not to speak about the president or the pm this in turn could have positive side effects and hopefully the president will be duly elected in the same manner and with adherence to the constitutional timeline 30 days from the first parliament meeting on 1 july posted in iraq parliamentary elections 2014 16 comments iraq s shiite alliance wavering in the question of the parliament speakership posted by reidar visser on monday 14 july 2014 22 15 the new iraqi parliament met briefly on sunday and failed to make much progress apart from agreeing to meet again on tuesday one interesting aspect of the proceedings that has failed to receive much attention concerns the stance of the pan shiite alliance on the issue of electing a speaker before a comprehensive agreement including the positions of president and prime minister has been reached the iraqi constitution envisages this kind of sequenced and piecemeal approach instead of the package deals that were done in 2006 and 2010 and for the first time in iraqi post 2003 history there has this year been a degree of actual support for this kind of approach from iraqi voices and players in the international community alike at least some members of the pan shiite alliance have also highlighted this possibility probably fully aware that if they stayed unified the shiites in theory have enough votes more than an absolute majority of 165 deputies to impose whatever speaker they would like to have interestingly though the shiite bloc has refrained from pushing through any particular speaker candidate to enable a separate speaker vote indeed it has been reported that it was members of the shiite alliance that played a role in having the parliament session on sunday adjourned following failure to arrive at a more comprehensive agreement on the other leadership posts this apparent reluctance to go ahead with the speaker election is interesting since it breaks with the trends of majoritarianism sometimes evident in the shiite alliance and especially in the state of law bloc of prime minister nuri al maliki instead there have been some rather contrived suggestions by members of the shiite alliance to impose particular conditions for the selection of the speaker in one version maliki s legal adviser tareq harb suggested that a speaker could be elected from the smaller lists and temporarily how one wonders can harb see this to resonate with his avowed orthodox approach to the iraqi constitution then on sunday hanan al fatlawi another maliki ally suggested the speaker could be elected from among some of the tiny religious minority lists in the iraqi parliament such as various christian lists shabak and sabaeans what this all suggests is that the shiite alliance remains worried about giving away the speaker seat to a sunni whom they don t fully trust salim al jibburi from the iraqi islamic party in diyala having been the most prominent candidate so far this in turn relates to a broader contradiction between majoritarianism and consensus models that continues to afflict the shiite alliance it goes back at least to the spring of 2011 when after having sometimes promoted majoritarianism in the preceding period the state of law coalition pathetically demanded the creation of a third vice presidency to make sure they had a say even within that minor office despite all the persisting talk of political majority it seems the shiite alliance has lately been fully preoccupied with dividing the spoils of the elections in the traditional way with heated discussions about who should be the shiite deputy speaker humam hamudi of isci is a forerunner and who should be the shiite deputy president it seems this may go to a sadrist in all of this it is worth noting that despite weather problems that some suggested dovetailed rather conveniently with kurdish threats to boycott the iraqi parliament the short session on sunday was actually rather well attended press reports talked about 225 235 out of 328 deputies present but the o fficial parliament record says 270 which is very high compared with averages from the previous parliamentary cycle what this means is that there are more than enough deputies present to complete a vote on a speaker which requires an absolute majority maybe iraqi politicians should now try to liberate themselves from past practices and just go ahead with the speaker vote as indeed the iraqi constitution stipulates such a move might in itself potentially produce new dynamics and alliances that are capable of affecting the current deadlock in the key question of who should be the next iraqi prime minister posted in iraq parliamentary elections 2014 iraqi constitutional issues uia dynamics 4 comments what went wrong in iraq the khedery version posted by reidar visser on sunday 6 july 2014 23 09 it s going to be cited a lot so it s worth taking a closer look at a quite lengthy opinion piece on us policy towards iraq and prime minister nuri al maliki that recently appeared in the washington post the article is signed by ali khedery one of the most prominent americans of iraqi origins to have served the united states government in iraq between 2003 and 2010 until now khedery s role has been largely unknown outside policy making circles but his assertion that he at times became the iraqi leader s go to guy for just about everything seems credible enough especially given his arabic language skills which by his own admission formed something of a rarity and an exception among high level us decision makers in iraq during the years of the bush administration khedery also had particularly close ties to maliki described as going back before maliki s emergence as premier in 2006 and involving for example a prominent and personal role during maliki s visit to london in 2009 for purposes of urgent medical treatment some valuable empirical information is certainly provided in the khedery piece we learn that not only did maliki have the habit of working 16 hours a day during his early days as premier until 2009 apparently leading us officials ambassador crocker and general petraeus reportedly were together with him for several hours virtually every day strengthening the impression of a period of american tutelage during long periods of maliki s first term also there is credible information in the khedery piece about the key circles of american support for maliki consisting chiefly of ambassador chris hill and brett mcgurk of the nsc but also crucially at a key juncture in september 2010 of vice president joe biden biden reportedly at one point in 2010 betted his vice presidency that maliki was going to extend a us iraqi agreement that would have enabled american soldiers to stay in iraq beyond 2011 also regarding the continuing debate over how the us ended up with maliki as pm in the first place i e in 2006 there is some new information that appears to differ slightly from what was revealed by dexter filkins in another recent review of us policy in iraq according to filkins it was an unnamed arabic speaking cia official who promoted maliki s candidature according to khedery it was himself and jeffrey beals also both arabic speaking but in most sources referred to as political officers at the state department rather than cia unless one of them was indeed cia there is some discordance between the two narratives however other parts of the piece by khedery are clearly misleading even when it comes to events that are well documented in open sources this contributes to a sense of distrust regarding the overall reliability of the piece and certainly raises questions about whether we can rely on khedery as a key informant for events where the available source base may be limited most of the more problematic comments by khedery seem guided by a master narrative of maliki bad ayad allawi of the secular iraqiyya and adel abd al mahdi of the shiite islamist isci good for example regarding the extensive use of de baathification for political purposes prior to the march 2010 general election khedery writes he maliki coerced iraq s chief justice to bar some of his rivals from participating in the elections this description of what happened comes across as disingenuous for starters the resuscitation of the de baathification issue in early 2010 was clearly driven by maliki s shiite enemies who with considerable iranian assistance had tried in vain to enlist him for their sectarian alliance during the previous summer among the newspapers that jumped on the de baathification propaganda bandwagon was the very al adala personally owned by khedary s progressive darling adel abd al mahdi on the other hand for his part maliki fought hard battles to retain his own candidates on the electoral ballots following attempts by de baathification hardliners to exclude them as late as days ahead of the march 2010 election it was not really until after the elections that maliki systematically tried to employ dirty tricks to change the result as seen first and foremost in the attempt to disqualify seat winners after the result had been announced a second major theme where khedery is tendentious concerns the ruling of the iraqi supreme court from may 2010 that deemed post election bloc coalescence with a view to forming the next government following elections a legitimate exercise under the iraqi constitution many americans have tried to portray this ruling as some kind of maliki coup but closer inspection of the relevant constitutional background materials suggests that the ruling was quite objective in addressing the limited constitutional ambiguity that existed many rulings of the iraqi supreme court can be seen as politicized perhaps more clearly so from 2011 and onwards but the largest bloc definition ruling just isn t one of them nonetheless khedery goes on to generalize from this ruling to a greater theme of safeguarding the iraqi constitution from what is seen as constant encroachments by maliki suffice to say in this context that back in 2010 the only part of the government formation deal that was truly in conflict with the iraqi constitution was the american sponsored idea of a strategic policy council created to accommodate another of khederys s friends ayyad allawi the overly crude characterizations of the workings of the iraqi judiciary continue in khedery s description of maliki s second term here there is arguably more to pick on but instead of focusing on some of the bluntest examples of judicial overreach that exist such as the ruling on the independent commissions in january 2011 khedery writes he maliki did not abide by a law imposing term limits again calling upon kangaroo courts to issue a favorable ruling in fact the veto of the term limits law was perfectly predictable with reference to past rulings of the iraqi supreme court which have consistently stressed the constitutional articles that say full legislative projects must go to parliament from the cabinet and or president before they can be voted upon one can agree or disagree with that orthodox reading of the iraqi constitution but in itself it is nothing new and the court was merely repeating itself rather than responding to some sort of maliki concoction authored as an ad hoc measure after the law on term limits appeared yet another theme that seemed biased in khedery s account concerns sunni secular representation in the maliki government that was eventually formed in december 2010 khedery describes this as impressive sounding posts with little authority well those posts included some rather weighty ministries such as finance in order to make sense of his own narrative khedery then conveniently flashes forward to the threatened arrest of vice president tareq al hashemi right after the us withdrawal from iraq in december 2011 and then jumps further to the targeting of rafi al eisawi the finance minister in late 2012 between those events however there were junctures where things could have gone very differently in iraqi politics if the us government had had the acumen to act in a more balanced way between unlimited support for maliki on the one hand and unrestrained kowtowing to the most radical voices among his enemies on the other then as if there is a need to amplify his story beyond empirical facts and as if he doesn t himself fully trust the persuasiveness of his own narrative khedery brings in some rather dubious expert witnesses whose presence in the story actually has the net effect of reducing khedery s own credibility as an objective chronicler first khedery finds reason to mention the fact that one stunned executive apparently of the council on foreign relations the father of an american marine turned to me and asked american troops are dying to keep that son of a b maliki in power no khedery one does not acquire some sort of higher monopoly on truth by fathering an american marine although that kind of belief is not entirely unknown in the us it would probably be no more difficult to find hundreds of executives with children serving in the us army who would be ready to use exactly the same kind of colourful language that was used about maliki with reference to president bush obama or both to make matters even worse khedery goes on to cite none other than muqtada al sadr for his labelling of maliki as a tyrant and that was meant to buttress khedery s own argument along similar lines well if muqtada the great democrat says so well surely it has to be true things like these make it more difficult to evaluate other aspects of the khedery piece that are not well known from previous accounts what for example are we to make about allegations about maliki s supposed desire to flatten whole parts of basra urging american airstrikes to level entire city blocks during the charge of the knights operations against the sadrists in early 2008 generally speaking khedery paints a mostly positive or sympathetic picture of maliki until khedery himself left baghdad in february 2009 however when khedery returned to iraq on a special mission during the frenzy of government formation in autumn 2010 he had clearly changed his mind about maliki and had only bad things to say about him instead for this period khedery drums up a rosy image of iraqiyya headed by ayyad allawi a moderate pro western coalition encompassing all of iraq s major ethno sectarian groups apparently khedery himself played a leading role in the attempt to make abd al mahdi of the shiite islamist isci the pm candidate of iraqiyya as well as a bid to obtain approval from the highest clergy in najaf for this kind of nationalist alternative very secular indeed that turn to najaf intri...
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