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description= 7 posts published by Reidar Visser during June 2012;
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the (371), #maliki (76), for (74), that (72), and (70), iraq (56), parliament (54), this (47), with (42), iraqi (42), vote (38), has (29), there (29), have (27), may (27), are (27), confidence (26), talabani (25), not (23), 2012 (22), signatures (21), his (21), june (21), about (20), more (20), than (19), from (19), some (18), will (18), prime (18), constitutional (17), but (17), they (17), nujayfi (16), questioning (16), constitution (16), request (15), one (15), president (15), been (15), minister (15), would (15), 2010 (15), posted (14), any (14), deputies (14), 2006 (13), 2008 (13), 2007 (13), 2013 (13), comments (12), issues (12), can (12), parliamentary (12), was (12), 2014 (12), 2009 (12), 2011 (12), iraqiyya (11), 163 (11), speaker (11), kurdish (11), law (11), its (11), august (11), their (10), whether (10), should (10), him (10), which (10), october (10), december (10), january (10), all (9), only (9), question (9), ministers (9), instead (9), mps (9), new (9), critics (9), 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Text of the page (random words):
p that even i can do it apparently the culprit are english versions of the iraqi constitution and in particular a mistranslation of article 64 which governs dissolution of parliament it should be emphasized at first that english versions of the iraqi constitution cannot be relied upon since there is not an official one their only value is that they may be faster to skim through for an english speaking reader if something needs to be located fast whereupon the relevant part of the arabic version should be consulted here is the relevant clause يُحل مجلس النواب بالاغلبية المطلقة لعدد اعضائه بناءً على طلبٍ من ثلث اعضائه او طلبٍ من رئيس مجلس الوزراء وبموافقة رئيس الجمهورية a reasonable translation would read roughly as follows parliament is dissolved by an absolute majority of its members based upon a request from a third of its members or a request from the prime minister with the consent of the president now possibly due to the insertion of several commas in the arabic versions some take this to read this as parliament is dissolved by an absolute majority or by a request from the prime minister with the consent of the president that of course is dramatically different since it would leave the executive in a far stronger position vis a vis the legislature but is it right thankfully we do not need to rely on non existing arabic punctuation rules to serve as arbiter in this case instead relax breathe easy and look for prepositions in the rump sentence in the case an attempt is made to link the dissolution of parliament directly to the prime ministerial request يُحل مجلس النواب او طلبٍ من رئيس مجلس الوزراء وبموافقة رئيس الجمهورية parliament is dissolved or a request from the prime minister and the president the preposition by is lacking this sentence wouldn t have passed a secondary school exam and it cannot be the iraqi constitution if the intention had been to give the prime minister the right to dissolve parliament with the mere consent of the president the relevant clause would instead have read aw bi talab min rais al wuzara but it doesn t it just says aw talab min rais al wuzara in this case the preposition by bi is exclusively linked to the absolute majority of the parliament this makes it clear that the prime ministerial involvement relates to the procedure for introducing the motion about parliamentary dissolution to parliament itself which in turn will make the big decision about dissolving the assembly at any rate at this point there is nothing to suggest that maliki s comments should be seen as anything more than a threat he feels forced under pressure to call early elections there is no indication that there is even presidential agreement to introduce the motion to parliament and in any case maliki would probably be unlikely to win it he probably knows it why would iraqi parliamentarians risk their own privileges the more worrying point is the tone of maliki s comments after meeting with ibrahim al jaafari last sunday asking parliament to clean up its act before questioning him there is much to suggest that maliki may have a stronger parliamentary base than his opponents claim but language of the kind he used over the weekend may soon lead to the evaporation over any additional support he got recently from disgruntled iraqiyya mps unhappy with the no confidence proposal much as his enemies appear unable to muster the 163 votes needed to unseat him maliki needs to understand that the implication of this is not that he himself controls 163 votes in the iraqi parliament posted in iraqi constitutional issues 79 comments maliki attempts pre emptive action against nujayfi posted by reidar visser on monday 25 june 2012 12 31 amid continued threats about a forthcoming questioning of prime minister nuri al maliki allies of the iraqi premier have embarked upon what seems to be a pre emptive move a formal request for a parliamentary debate on the performance of parliament speaker usama al nujayfi with a focus on alleged constitutional infractions to some extent the maliki nujayfi struggle has the characteristics of a tit for tat escalation between maliki s shia islamist state of law bloc and nujayfi s secular and sunni backed iraqiyya true this is not the first time there has been tension between the two but it was mainly after the issue of a maliki no confidence vote came on the agenda earlier this spring that the idea of sacking nujayfi as parliament speaker became a prominent issue one aspect to keep in mind regarding a potential attempt to oust nujayfi is that the modalities for getting rid of the parliament speaker are not covered in the iraqi constitution instead the process is governed by the law on the replacement of deputies the relevant clause was adopted in a revision of that law in 2007 and the relevant paragraph says parliament can sack its speaker with an absolute majority based on a reasoned request from a third of its members in today s iraqi parliament those numerical requirements translate into 163 mps for sacking the speaker same as for sacking the pm and 109 for calling the vote it is noteworthy that there is in some ways thus a stricter requirement for introducing a no confidence vote against the speaker than against the pm the latter can be called by 65 members following questioning initiated by 25 mps it is noteworthy also that the request from state of law that has been filed is not an outright call for a vote on his ouster rather they are talking about a debate preparatory to his sacking no more than 25 signatures are required for this 61 7 b of the constitution maliki allies say they will ask nujayfi about his alleged interference in the exxon mobil issue in nineveh as well as supposed sectarian partition schemes for iraq it may well be possible that state of law can successfully call the vote for sacking nujayfi by garnering the required 109 signatures for a vote to succeed in reaching the 163 threshold for actually replacing him however they need a lot more votes than they currently have in particular many of those iraqiyya deputies who supported maliki on disputed territories may be reluctant to go as far as voting down their former ally nujayfi indeed the somewhat cumbersome approach of calling for a debate before a no confidence vote on the speaker when no such preceding debate is legally speaking required before he can be sacked seems to indicate that state of law at present may be unable to even reach the 109 mark needed for a direct straightforward vote on nujayfi perhaps the most important gain for maliki in this relates to initiative it is remarkable that despite all the talk about questioning maliki a formal request for doing so has yet to be filed this in turn means that the issue of nujayfi s own status as parliament speaker is now higher up on the agenda and the parliament presidency will need to come up with reasons if they want to procrastinate the debate about nujayfi meanwhile the most promising piece of news from the first session of parliament in the new parliamentary cycle that began on saturday doubtless relates to numbers no less than 248 out of 325 deputies showed up this is actually very high for iraq hopefully it signifies a new trend in today s session parliament there are no major votes on the agenda but attendance figures are once more reported in the same high range around 250 if this trend stabilises it could mean more in the long run than the continued war of words between iraqiyya and state of law posted in iraq s 2010 parliamentary election iraqi constitutional issues 6 comments a smart move by maliki evoking the stability argument on krg foreign oil deals posted by reidar visser on thursday 21 june 2012 13 06 in an interesting move prime minister nuri al maliki has asked president barack obama to intervene to stop exxon mobil activities in areas of iraq controlled by the autonomous kurdistan regional government few details of the correspondence are known the white house has officially acknowledged receipt of the letter from maliki but has made no elaborate comment except saying it will reply in due course a few comments on the letter by a maliki adviser have been published by reuters there is one interesting snippet of information in the reports that have emerged so far maliki is evoking iraq s political stability as an argument against exxon s operations in kurdistan as is well known the conflict between baghdad and the kurds on oil concerns above all the right to sign deal with foreign companies generally additionally some of the exxon deals with the kurds affect areas that are not only disputed between the krg and baghdad but even include territories that may well revert to the central government in a final border settlement the united states already has a series of executive orders in force relating to the stability of iraq though most of them target support for terrorism more specifically given maliki s choice of language though it is not inconceivable that he has in mind a logic similar to that embodied in a recent presidential executive order against us citizens threatening the stability of yemen that order contains deliberately vague language and could in theory apply to everything from al qaeda to aden separatism at any rate by choosing the stability focus maliki is also addressing a latent contradiction in us policy on iraq that is rarely addressed by the americans themselves their continued support for kurdish leaders with declared separatist agendas despite an official us desideratum of a unified iraq within its sovereign borders the fact is that the united states and many european nations are treating kurdish leader masud barzani pretty much as a head of state with privileges during state visits etc that few other heads of federal entities worldwide can expect this is precisely the sort of schizophrenic behaviour that has helped create unmanageable formulas for iraqi governance like the erbil agreement it would be more honest of these players to make up their minds and either support full kurdish independence or encourage policies that would provide for meaningful integration of the kurdish region in an iraqi federation whether washington will actually use this opportunity to rethink its iraq policy remains to be seen it is perhaps somewhat unrealistic given the presence of an able kurdish lobby in dc that helped create the current contradictive policy in the first place at the very least though maliki will likely score some domestic points on the issue of the same kind that recently endeared him to sunni and secularist figures unhappy with how parts of the iraqiyya leadership are cooperating with the kurds including in relation to exxon mobil in nineveh whether such support for maliki s krg policy is sufficient to prevent any concerted action against him when the iraqi parliament reconvenes on saturday is still unclear already some of maliki s enemies are accusing him of manipulating the security environment around parliament with a view to intimidating political opponents in particular this applies to the recent removal of the concrete barriers surrounding the national assembly an unremarkable agenda for saturday s session appeared on the parliament website yesterday only to be removed again today parliament speaker nujayfi now says he expects a request for a questioning of maliki within two to three days whereas iraqi state television has indicated a forthcoming request for maliki himself for an emergency session possibly a pre emptive move at any rate with president jalal talabani having apparently abandoned the project of a presidential call for a no confidence vote the conflict surrounding maliki s premiership is now likely to become a more long drawn affair posted in kirkuk and disputed territories oil in iraq us policy in iraq leverage issues 37 comments question time posted by reidar visser on thursday 14 june 2012 17 55 critics of iraq s prime minister nuri al maliki must have realized it late yesterday if not earlier president jalal talabani is not going to call for a no confidence vote in maliki a letter from talabani s office made that perfectly clear leaving maliki s critics with only one constitutional option for unseating the premier a questioning before parliament to be followed in a subsequent and separate session by a no confidence vote in theory holding the questioning itself should be relatively easy a mere 25 deputies can ask the parliament presidency all of which is currently anti maliki to summon the prime minister the threshold for asking for a subsequent no confidence vote is also modest a fifth of deputies i e 65 deputies in the current 325 member assembly what should they ask about this is where the problems begin true to form the critics of maliki have reportedly formed no less than three committees to concoct nasty questions to be put to the premier in the parliamentary chamber one story claims bahaa al aaraji the sadrist will lead the charge maliki s allies cannot be any worse than this and have promised catalogues of files of alleged criminal wrongdoing on the part of maliki s enemies that will be revealed during the questioning thereby changing the dynamics radically or so goes their scenario anyway few critics of maliki appear to have taken much notice of a potentially fateful ruling by the iraqi supreme court some weeks ago which severely limited the ability of parliament to question ministers essentially it said that in order for ministers to be summoned before parliament there had to be a specific criminal charge or constitutional infraction for which to hold them accountable the ruling amounted to nothing less than a rewriting of the iraqi constitution since no such strings are attached there but iraqi media have been slow to respond importantly whether one agrees with the ruling or not it applies to ministers and prime ministers alike since they are all treated on an equal footing in the relevant article of the iraqi constitution 61 7 c the ruling was given in the context of the potential questioning of a maliki ally ali al adib who is minister for higher education but some maliki supporters are already discussing the potential questioning of the prime minister in a similar vein the obvious question is will the issues maliki s critics want to raise satisfy the new and more restrictive criteria of the supreme court for a parliamentary questioning istijwab generally speaking questions about corruption or the failure to provide services are unlikely to succeed simply on procedural grounds the subjects most likely to meet with approval as suitable subjects for questioning are constitutional infractions on the part of maliki on very specific issues two stand out the first is the failure of the iraqi cabinet since 2010 to honour the requests for federalism referendums in numerous iraqi governorates including basra wasit salahaddin and diyala this is a very clear violation of the law on forming regions that was ...
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