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description=7 posts published by Reidar Visser during June 2012;

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the, how, to, iraqi, maliki, iraq, on, and, gulf, analysis, archive, for, june, 2012, archives, categories, meta, my, latest, book, amazon, com, twitter, updates, subscribe, recent, posts, dissolve, parliament, attempts, pre, emptive, action, against, nujayfi, smart, move, by, evoking, stability, argument, krg, foreign, oil, deals, question, time, just, exactly, many, mps, are, ready, vote, out, united, states, taking, backseat, in, sack, an, prime, minister,

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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), state (9), november (9), february (9), march (9), april (9), july (9), september (9), now (8), even (8), right (8), recent (8), ruling (8), majority (8), also (8), case (8), nuri (8), very (8), well (8), against (8), were (8), support (8), move (7), them (7), absolute (7), most (7), reidar (7), visser (7), policy (7), between (7), had (7), out (7), presidential (7), federalism (7), cabinet (7), com (6), already (6), possible (6), ask (6), though (6), actually (6), numbers (6), who (6), what (6), still (6), course (6), apparently (6), week (6), premier (6), own (6), article (6), puk (6), less (6), required (6), since (6), before (6), call (6), long (6), issue (6), first (6), relevant (6), other (5), time (5), deal (5), supreme (5), court (5), need (5), two (5), jalal (5), kind (5), over (5), how (5), sectarian (5), might (5), potential (5), disputed (5), territories (5), such (5), into (5), kurds (5), failure (5), iranian (5), baghdad (5), oil (5), national (5), again (5), today (5), 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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 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...