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description= 7 posts published by Reidar Visser during July 2014;
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the president of the republic for which a separate law with elaborate procedures exists the nomination of the iraqi prime minister is governed entirely by the iraqi constitution as a result the selection of the prime minister candidate is arguably the most sensitive and unpredictable stage of the iraqi government formation process with respect to the iraqi constitution it simply says in article 76 that within 15 days of his election the new president must charge the candidate of the largest parliament bloc to form a new government within 30 days the new cabinet will then be presented for parliament for approval by an absolute majority for ministers individually as well as the cabinet programme beyond the constitution there is an opinion by the iraqi federal supreme court no 25 of 2010 that sets out to clarify some of the vagueness of article 76 this piece of constitutional jurisprudence has been cited and criticized far more than it has been actually analysed what the opinion does is basically two things first it provides a specification about what is meant in article 76 of the iraqi constitution on the duty of the president to charge the candidate of the largest parliamentary bloc to form the government on this the opinion suggests that it is irrelevant whether the bloc was formed before or after the election which was an issue of contention in 2010 the opinion on this is quite logical and not as contrived as has been suggested since the constitution talks about parliamentary bloc kutla niyabiyya rather than electoral list qaima however secondly the opinion of the court goes on to introduce a point whose relationship with the constitution is more unclear it establishes a cut off date for bloc formation by saying that what counts is bloc size at the time of the first sitting of the new parliament it is not clear why after the general principle of post election bloc formation has already been admitted there should be any reason to consider the first meeting of parliament as particularly important from the constitutional point of view after all parliament can be expected to have several meetings before the pm is nominated even if the constitutional timelines are strictly adhered to and it would for example be far more logical to establish a cut off point following the election of the president when a 15 day window for finding the pm nominee begins in any case what all of this suggests is that the iraqi constitution is far from crystal clear on the nomination of the pm and that at least a degree of presidential discretion should be taken as a given and certainly with respect to what point in time the largest bloc should be estimated however although iraqi politicians have engaged in a ridiculous amount of correspondence to indicate their bloc size at the time of the first parliament meeting on 1 july it really is a different problem that is now more acutely coming into the foreground the problem is that iraqi factions seem to cling to the erroneous view that the right to form the next government is governed by bloc size alone that view is misleading there are two elements in the constitutional instructions for the president he needs to identify a bloc and a candidate blocs are only relevant for purposes of government formation if they also have a candidate candidates with no blocs are irrelevant as are blocs with no candidates in other words a bloc does not have a right to form a government by virtue of size alone and that is why all the calls for the shiite alliance to be charged with the premier nomination as an assumed right of the bloc in the current situation are beside the point since the shiite alliance doesn t have an agreed pm candidate a bloc with no pm candidate has no right to even enter the discussion of government formation no matter its size the biggest bloc in the iraqi parliament that also has a pm candidate is currently state of law whose candidate of course is nuri al maliki members of this bloc including maliki himself are now explicitly demanding the right to form a government separate from the rest of the putative pan shiite alliance unless a bigger bloc comes up with a candidate before the constitutional timeline for pm nomination expires on 8 august or a few days later if holidays are counted president fuad masum has a constitutional duty to charge maliki with forming his third government regardless of whether he has a realistic chance of reaching an absolute majority when he presents it to parliament for approval or a second attempt by another candidate will be needed whether this second scenario will come into play remains to be seen noteworthy in this respect is the almost sensational amount of presidential discretion that exists in the case the first pm nominee fails the president s job in that case is simply to find a new candidate yes you read that correctly article 76 3 of the iraqi constitution it doesn t say which bloc the second candidate should come from just that it should be a new candidate apart from the general age and education requirements of article 77 there is in other words nothing much to go by in theory then the president s mandate in the potential case of a second pm nomination could be interpreted as using his political skills to select whomever he thinks has the greatest chance of carrying an absolute majority in the iraqi parliament iraqi politicians now have the rest of the eid and the next weekend to contemplate these issues but soon they will have to go beyond the debates about numbers and focus on the premier candidates themselves posted in iraqi constitutional issues 16 comments iraq elects fuad masum as new president posted by reidar visser on thursday 24 july 2014 18 07 there was both irony and symbolism in the air as un secretary general ban ki moon visited iraq today in his address upon arriving ki moon highlighted the importance of the iraqi parliament adhering to constitutional timelines for forming the new government for its part apparently unaware about the visit the iraqi parliament was already in session in order to accommodate ki moon it had to postpone its planned vote on a new president by more than an hour once the voting got underway things went rather faster than expected parliament speaker salim al jibburi announced that a committee had considered more than 100 candidates and made some disqualifications based on formal criteria such as age education and de baathification status he then proceeded to call a vote on several dozen candidates there is a case to be made that the way the election was carried out was illegal this is so because the law on presidency candidates distinctly stipulates that rejected candidates of which there were several have a 3 day right of appeal to the federal supreme court this was not honoured sadly during the procedural discussion prior to the vote iraqi mps wasted their time on political arguments instead of these important legal questions as for the speaker himself maybe it was too much to expect that he should take any interest in putting the law above the interests of big political parties since he himself acquired his seat in the previous parliament in an illegal fashion in 2010 and given that jibburi is a darling of the us embassy it would perhaps be too much to expect them or the un to care about these little details of legality what happened instead was that a first vote was held in which the candidate of the unified kurdish blocs received 175 votes convincing and indicative of the broad political consensus that was also achieved when the new parliament speaker was elected but of short of the 218 absolute majority required for the president in the first vote the second best vote getter was hanan al fatlawi of the bloc of prime minister nuri al maliki who had launched her candidacy in a personal capacity she got 37 votes whereas several other candidates got a handful of votes each no verified statistics are available since the iraq parliament website remains offline following rather unseemly interventions by shiite alliance figures ibrahim al jaafari and baha al aaraji fatlawi was intimidated into withdrawing her candidacy the third best vote getter faiq al sheikh ali also withdrew leaving it to the judge hussein al musawi who also challenged talabani in 2010 to stand against masum in the largely ceremonial second vote since he was absent from parliament he was unable to withdraw of course the optics of all of this represented a miserable rupture with positive tendencies in the direction of more mature non sectarian politics seen in the run up to the presidential vote there was something distinctively impotent over the way presidential candidates gave inspired speeches defending their choice to stand as candidates in a protest against the ethno sectarian spoils system only to withdraw and leave the field open to the candidate largely decided by one of the kurdish parties puk in its closed meetings iraq is now actually ahead of the constitutional timeline for forming its next government but the potentially most problematic task remains agreeing on a prime minister the president has got 14 days to nominate the pm candidate of the largest bloc in parliament and exactly like in 2010 there are questions about the identity of that bloc and its candidate in general much of what has been said publicly about 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 con...
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