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description= 7 posts published by Reidar Visser during July 2014;
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out this matter has been futile the opinion of the new parliament speaker has been quoted as has the federal supreme court with claims and counterclaims about its position the truth is it is for the new president to identify the largest bloc and ask its pm candidate to form the next government whereas the pan shiite alliance has declared itself the largest bloc repeatedly there is a case to be made that as long as it does not have an agreed pm candidate it doesn t exist in a way that is interesting to the iraqi government formation and that the state of law bloc of pm maliki whose candidate is maliki is the biggest bloc it is being reported that masum will meet soon with the shiite alliance to clarify these things unless a pm candidate emerges maliki could legitimately complain to the federal supreme court that masum is wasting his time with a non existent political alliance one additional interesting aspect of today s sessions iraqi mps apparently forgot about ueseless vice presidential positions altogether hopeully the pm question will now remain their preoccupation posted in uncategorized comments off on iraq elects fuad masum as new president for the first time in iraq a large field of presidential candidates posted by reidar visser on tuesday 22 july 2014 18 29 following positive developments in the iraqi parliament and the election of a speaker before agreement was reached on other leadership positions it is more difficult to evaluate the posturing for the next constitutional step the election of the largely ceremonial office of president of the iraqi republic for starters one very key source has been missing for days the iraqi parliament website is offline apparently due to a site subscriber or maintenance issue or potentially to do with a hacker attack this prevents insights into the details of the ongoing process of nominations to the presidential post according to the law on candidacies for the iraqi presidency candidates are to submit their credentials within 3 days of the election of the speaker whereupon the speaker has got 3 days to vet them for formal criteria age education de baathification status etc before a 3 day appeals window for any candidate excluded during the initial part of the process with reports about a large field of candidates it is very hard to see how due process can be adhered to if an attempt to elect the president will go ahead on wednesday as press reports suggest the legal adviser of prime minister nuri al maliki tareq harb has suggested that adherence to the timelines of proper vetting and appeal possibilities would take us to august before the president could be voted on by way of contrast though at a presser today the new parliament speaker salim al jibburi nonetheless seemed to indicate that a vote would go ahead which seems legally problematic beyond the legal aspects there are potential procedural and practical problems relating to the election of the next president following the explosion of the number of candidates this year in 2006 jalal talabani was the only candidate in 2010 he was challenged by a judge who presented himself as candidate in protest against the ethno sectarian spoils system this year more than 100 candidates have reportedly registered as a minimum a vote on the president should feature a brief presentation of each candidate meaning the presentation of candidates alone could go on for many many hours and we have not even talked about vice presidents yet of course in general terms the multiplication of presidential candidates seems to be a good thing for iraq s democracy there has been a stark contrast between the official discourse of a contest that is open to all with potential contestants ranging from those who protest the ethno sectarian spoils system to those who think the presidency should go to particular ethnicities and what many believed was the real decision making process a debate about which member of the kurdish puk party should have the job maybe with the president of the kurdish region as supreme arbiter eventually though even the puk came up with more than one candidate as both fuad masum and barham salih registered for potential election in general the greater openness seems to have a liberating effect on iraqi politics if only iraqi politicians can manage to find a way of getting the formalities right for the much larger field of presidential candidates than usual posted in uncategorized 3 comments the iraqi parliament elects its new speakership posted by reidar visser on tuesday 15 july 2014 20 05 claims and counter claims continue to dominate iraqi media concerning the military battle against isis in the north of the country with reports about renewed action around tikrit today but whatever the exact situation may be in tikrit the iraqi parliament in baghdad today scored a very significant victory in the battle against isis the election of a new parliament speakership in accordance with the relevant constitutional provisions the vote today was historical also for reasons beyond the ongoing struggle against isis above all it is the first time in iraq s post 2003 history that iraqi deputies have followed the constitution to the letter and held a separate vote on the parliament speaker and his two deputies previously the speaker vote has been subjected to more far reaching package deals also covering the presidency and the premiership indeed as late as during the first session of the new iraqi parliament just 2 weeks ago sunnis and kurds demanded that the shiites decide on their premier candidate before a vote on the speaker now after considerable pressure from the outside and in particular from the shiite clergy that knot has been disentangled hopefully it will all have positive and liberating side effects for iraq s political process the votes on the new speaker and his two deputies were in themselves interesting although not much is known about voting patterns because of the secrecy paper ballots with which the votes were conducted firstly salim al jibburi originally of the sunni islamist iraqi islamic party from diyala and currently part of a wider sunni alliance headed by usama al nujayfi the former parliament speaker won the speakership itself with an impressive 194 votes far more than the required absolute majority of 165 votes his challenger shuruq al abaji a female mp from a smaller secular bloc got only 19 votes whereas 60 blank or invalid votes seemed to indicate some sort of protest the first deputy vote was more dramatic with ahmed chalabi mounting a surprise internal shiite challenge to the official shiite alliance candidate haydar al abbadi of the maliki list there was also a third candidate faris yusuf juju yet again a secularist abbadi did win the competition with chalabi 149 107 but that was not enough for an absolute majority chalabi then withdrew and abbadi won the second vote with 188 votes though 76 deputies voted blank the second deputy vote was more of an acclamation with the kurdish candidate from the gorran party aram sheikh mohammad gaining 171 votes and with 70 blank votes not all of this is easy to interpret the blank votes seem to have been quite consistently in the range of 60 to 70 deputies though this has not been tied to any particular bloc the bomb represented by the intra shiite chalabi challenge to abbadi may have been an attempt at testing the waters for a forthcoming premier candidacy and his ability to attract votes outside the shia alliance although it has been suggested that it is difficult to compare the abbadi chalabi struggle with a future maliki chalabi struggle because abbadi has more friends than maliki outside his own faction at any rate it was quite impressive for maliki s coalition to gain 149 votes for abbadi in today s heated political atmosphere where the advance of isis has been so marked lately that it could now be hurting maliki more than it is helping him abbadi was nominated as recently as this morning after humam hammudi of isci had been considered 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 ex...
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