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description=7 posts published by Reidar Visser during July 2014;

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ng 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 extend a us iraqi agreement that would have enabled american soldiers to stay in iraq beyond 2011 also regarding the continuing debate over how the us ended up with maliki as pm in the first place i e in 2006 there is some new information that appears to differ slightly from what was revealed by dexter filkins in another recent review of us policy in iraq according to filkins it was an unnamed arabic speaking cia official who promoted maliki s candidature according to khedery it was himself and jeffrey beals also both arabic speaking but in most sources referred to as political officers at the state department rather than cia unless one of them was indeed cia there is some discordance between the two narratives however other parts of the piece by khedery are clearly misleading even when it comes to events that are well documented in open sources this contributes to a sense of distrust regarding the overall reliability of the piece and certainly raises questions about whether we can rely on khedery as a key informant for events where the available source base may be limited most of the more problematic comments by khedery seem guided by a master narrative of maliki bad ayad allawi of the secular iraqiyya and adel abd al mahdi of the shiite islamist isci good for example regarding the extensive use of de baathification for political purposes prior to the march 2010 general election khedery writes he maliki coerced iraq s chief justice to bar some of his rivals from participating in the elections this description of what happened comes across as disingenuous for starters the resuscitation of the de baathification issue in early 2010 was clearly driven by maliki s shiite enemies who with considerable iranian assistance had tried in vain to enlist him for their sectarian alliance during the previous summer among the newspapers that jumped on the de baathification propaganda bandwagon was the very al adala personally owned by khedary s progressive darling adel abd al mahdi on the other hand for his part maliki fought hard battles to retain his own candidates on the electoral ballots following attempts by de baathification hardliners to exclude them as late as days ahead of the march 2010 election it was not really until after the elections that maliki systematically tried to employ dirty tricks to change the result as seen first and foremost in the attempt to disqualify seat winners after the result had been announced a second major theme where khedery is tendentious concerns the ruling of the iraqi supreme court from may 2010 that deemed post election bloc coalescence with a view to forming the next government following elections a legitimate exercise under the iraqi constitution many americans have tried to portray this ruling as some kind of maliki coup but closer inspection of the relevant constitutional background materials suggests that the ruling was quite objective in addressing the limited constitutional ambiguity that existed many rulings of the iraqi supreme court can be seen as politicized perhaps more clearly so from 2011 and onwards but the largest bloc definition ruling just isn t one of them nonetheless khedery goes on to generalize from this ruling to a greater theme of safeguarding the iraqi constitution from what is seen as constant encroachments by maliki suffice to say in this context that back in 2010 the only part of the government formation deal that was truly in conflict with the iraqi constitution was the american sponsored idea of a strategic policy council created to accommodate another of khederys s friends ayyad allawi the overly crude characterizations of the workings of the iraqi judiciary continue in khedery s description of maliki s second term here there is arguably more to pick on but instead of focusing on some of the bluntest examples of judicial overreach that exist such as the ruling on the independent commissions in january 2011 khedery writes he maliki did not abide by a law imposing term limits again calling upon kangaroo courts to issue a favorable ruling in fact the veto of the term limits law was perfectly predictable with reference to past rulings of the iraqi supreme court which have consistently stressed the constitutional articles that say full legislative projects must go to parliament from the cabinet and or president before they can be voted upon one can agree or disagree with that orthodox reading of the iraqi constitution but in itself it is nothing new and the court was merely repeating itself rather than responding to some sort of maliki concoction authored as an ad hoc measure after the law on term limits appeared yet another theme that seemed biased in khedery s account concerns sunni secular representation in the maliki government that was eventually formed in december 2010 khedery describes this as impressive sounding posts with little authority well those posts included some rather weighty ministries such as finance in order to make sense of his own narrative khedery then conveniently flashes forward to the threaten...