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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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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 adopted in 2006 and promulgated in 2008 as the implementation of article 118 of the constitution and which specifically charges the cabinet with putting the referendums in motion as soon as the requests have been received at least in sunni dominated diyala and parts of salahaddin the pro federal currents seem to remain alive and as long as the federalists remembered to lodge a formal request for a referendum alongside all the unnecessary bluster abut declaring themselves regions there is plenty of reasons to ask maliki what happened to those constitutionally mandated referendums article 78 of the constitution charges the pm with administering his cabinet so this is his responsibility a second subject that could count as a constitutional infraction by maliki is the failure to have upper level military officers by parliament as demanded by article 80 5 again the pm has a special responsibility as administrator of the cabinet whether any such questioning would succeed in a successful no confidence vote remains unclear for a long time the numbers in favour of a direct no confidence vote seemed exaggerated and masked the possibility that they might fall just short of the critical 163 absolute majority mark additionally if any of the two specific constitutional infractions discussed above come into play maliki may still be able to win over additional support for example on federalism while the constitution is clear maliki might well be able to successfully use arguments of national unity in the assembly in the same way as he has used them in the governorates where he has been able to mobilise sunni tribes on an anti federal basis and translate this into parliamentary support in other words maliki s implicit argument for violating the constitution for the sake of national unity may curry favour with at least some mps the failure to have high level military officials confirmed by parliament is an issue which more directly touches on the parliamentary oversight role that lies at the heart of any definition of democracy again though maliki might conceivably succeed in winning over at least some potential critics by referring to expediency and the abysmal efficiency record of the iraqi parliament whatever happens it is to be hoped that the no confidence vote if requested is allowed to go ahead as long as there is adherence to the basic constitutional modalities whoever wins this process will come out strengthened if the rules of the game are followed as much as possible parliament is scheduled to meet again on 21 june posted in iraqi constitutional issues 32 comments just exactly how many iraqi mps are ready to vote out maliki posted by reidar visser on sunday 10 june 2012 16 54 late last night iraq s president jalal talabani broke his long silence on exactly what is going on with the request for a no confidence vote against the country s embattled premier nuri al maliki for a clarification talabani s latest announcement was relatively convoluted still there is now at least a few more pieces of information available firstly talabani is aware that the signature collection does not form part of the constitutional procedure for a presidential call for a no confidence vote good nonetheless he has apparently asked for the signatures in advance in some kind of intermediary gesture to the opposing camps his aim has probably been to establish whether there was basis for a no confidence vote to succeed in this more limited capacity as an opinion poll if you will the exercise is of course valid it also has some interest for predicting the likely outcome of a vote in parliament as said before though there are methodological issues here relating in particular to the difference between collecting written signatures via email and actually having people come and vote in the parliament chamber this aspect is salient given the overall low attendance level in the iraqi parliament additionally there is of course the question of whether talabani s office is up to the best standards in terms of analyzing this material the public statement erroneously refers to quorum nisab instead of an absolute majority as the required threshold they are both at 163 but no excuses for the confusion by the presidential guardian of the constitution we can only hope there are no more errors in the press release to the numbers reported by talabani then most wire services on saturday said only 160 mps had signed thus falling just short of the required 163 needed to unseat maliki but a fine reading of the presidential statement shows that is not necessarily the case instead talabani essentially gives us something of a mathematical equation 160 signatures from iraqiyya the kurdistan alliance the sadrists and independent mps were initially presented an unspecified number of signatures from the puk talabani s own kurdish party were subsequently added this must be more than 3 since at one point there were more than 163 signatures but less than 12 the total of puk mps in parliament assuming none had signed off in the initial batch of 160 subsequently 11 signatures were withdrawn and 2 were suspended taliq this is evidently so strange that even the arabic statement uses quotation marks the remaining total is less than 163 it should be noted that there is no word about falsification of signatures a subject which consumed a good deal of heated exchanges in the press last week let us for the sake of the argument assume that the unknown variable here the puk signatures were at their highest possible value i e 12 the total of puk representatives in the iraqi parliament that would leave us with a maximum of 160 12 11 2 signatures by people ready to vote down maliki i e 159 this is 4 less than the required threshold of 163 in line with conservative estimates presented earlier in the week and significantly lower than numbers reported by maliki critics ranging from 176 to 200 plus at the very maximum there may at one point have been 172 signatures according to the talabani statement add to this the fact that it is easier to make people sign via email than show up in parliament maliki lawyer tareq harb appears to have his own count arriving at 146 but apparently not counting the puk signatures that were added at one point the maliki critics who met again at erbil today have plenty to think about they are apparently considering a plan b consisting of the second route to a no confidence vote a questioning of the parliament called for by 25 deputies followed by a no confidence vote called for by 65 deputies this approach is not without its problems it takes longer the supreme court recently issued a very biased ruling limiting the right to question ministers it has received zero attention by the iraqi press but was almost certainly calculated to also apply to the eventuality of a prime ministerial no confidence vote and the support of president talabani and his kurdish puk party would not be a given in any case its proponents should now stop trying to convince the iraqi public about their number of signatures today iraqiyya leaders boast they have 10 more up the sleeve and there are even reports about another futile attempt to send one more letter to talabani to convince him instead if they truly want a vote they should simply begin making specific steps towards a questioning of maliki in parliament which begins with a request by 25 deputies to the parliament speaker usama al nujayfi of iraqiyya to summon maliki to the national assembly talabani does not rule out this second option of course indeed in calling for the national meeting the gathering of leaders sought by maliki instead of a no confidence vote he says this can be useful whether the premier is ousted or not maliki critics should however take notice how firmly talabani asserts his own right to appoint any replacement in line with article 76 of the constitution by which is it his job to identify the candidate of the biggest bloc in parliament if the shiite alliance breaks down as a result of a no confidence vote in maliki and the remnants fail to form alliances with iraqiyya and the kurds that might in theory well be maliki s own state of law bloc and its premier candidate maliki himself posted in iraq parliament membership iraqi constitutional issues 22 comments the united states taking the backseat in iraq posted by reidar visser on thursday 7 june 2012 16 34 it hasn t quite received the media attention it deserves during the midst of the current political crisis in iraq the top us diplomat in iraq ambassador james jeffrey a recurrent figure in many conspiracy theories about elaborate us schemes for dividing and ruling the region must have sneaked out the back door already the wall street journal is making interviews with him referring to his past tenure in iraq and this week despite the climax of the moves to unseat prime minister nuri al maliki ibrahim al jaafari met with a chargé d affaires from the biggest us embassy in the world wait wasn t vice president joe biden the iraq czar of the obama administration supposed to show up in baghdad instead this week well that was what the rumours said but we re at the end of the working week in iraq and still no joe in baghdad it seems the iraqis not without some sort of loud cheering from the turks and the iranians will be sorting this one out themselves meanwhile wednesday brett mcgurk the next us ambassador in iraq was still in washington in a senate confirmation hearing answering rather lame question about oil production sunnis and shiites and militant groups it is however noteworthy that mcgurk who has been so strongly associated with us backing of maliki that iraqiyya promptly declared they would have nothing to do with him upon his nomination was at pains to express an evenhanded approach to iraqi politics if a new pm were in place tomorrow mcgurk would deal with him as with maliki political agreements meaning erbil would be respected alongside the constitution and mcgurk went even further than that apparently reflecting the success of a strong kurdish lobby in dc he declared his desire to visit kurdistan every week of his tenure if confirmed that is a lot of travelling for a high value us target in iraq of course ambassador jeffrey must have left on or around 1 june when his tenure was supposed to end anyway be that as it may the net effect of all of this may be that the united states will have only a limited role in the question of whether prime minister nuri al maliki will go or not right now it actually seems an intra kurdish struggle with some considerable iranian pressure on president jalal talabani is the main factor behind the delay of the introduction of a non confidence vote against maliki in the iraqi parliament some will no doubt see this kind of limited us involvement as a desirable process of disengagement that would be a fair interpretation had it not been for the very glaring and physical image of the mega embassy of the americans in baghdad the remnant of an altogether different vision of hands on us involvement the jeffrey remarks to the wsj came in a story on the unexpected downsizing of the cia presence in iraq it would be fair to talk about successful disengagement had it also not been for the fact that what remains of us fingers in iraq seem to be working at counter purpose in the embassy as well as in the us senate discussion is still about sunnis and shiites and kurds and the implementation of th...
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