Viewpoint

The US Exploiting Iraq’s Constitutional Vacuum

Date: 17 April 2022 - 21:18

News ID: ۱۰۱۷۴۰

By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

It seems that in Iraq the politicians are in no haste to form a government no matter what problems the people face due to absence of elected authority in Baghdad and unconcerned about the continued violation of national sovereignty by the US occupation forces.
As a matter of fact this lackadaisical attitude of the Iraqi political parties and their bickering as to who should govern the country has been fully exploited by the Americans to deepen divisions amongst them since the resulting lack of leadership allows the occupiers to steal billions of barrels of oil every year.
It is now six months following the holding of the much-delayed parliamentary polls on October 10 and still there is no consensus on selecting the new president, who as per the constitution should then invite the party with the most seats which can prove of forming a majority through alliances with other parties in order to nominate the prime minister who in turn would select cabinet ministers for a broad-based government.
The so-called ‘Alliance to Save the Homeland’, which the Sadrist Movement holding 73 seats in the 329 parliament has set up in coordination with Masoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and some groups representing the Sunni Arab minority, has failed to muster the required number of votes for the process to form a national government.
The parliament failed twice during the past few weeks to elect the president because the required quorum of two-thirds of the total MPs had not been met, mainly because of the boycott of the sessions by the other leading faction in Iraqi politics, the Coordination Framework that calls for a consensus government.
This group though it polled lesser number of seats in the parliamentary elections than the Sadrists, represents the majority of the Iraqi population, that is, the Shi’a Muslims.
Its two main members are the State of Law Coalition of former Prime Minister Nouri Maleki, and the al-Fateh Alliance of former Cabinet Minister Hadi al-Amiri (of the famous Badr Organization), and various groups of Hashd ash-Sha’bi – the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU).
The failure has thus led to a political vacuum, forcing the Federal Supreme Court, which following the end of its constitutional deadline to the political parties on April 6 to resort to legal jurisprudence and issue a decision to continue the term of current President Barham Salih until a new president is elected.
The question which arises and which most Iraqis are posing is: “Why was the carpet pulled from underneath the feet of Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi before he had completed even one year, and what has the current instability brought Iraq?
The answer is obvious. It was US pressure, which unfortunately had hoodwinked some politically naïve religious circles in calling for resignation of Abdul-Mahdi since the Americans feared that strong central authority in Baghdad was against their vested interests.
It is still not too late for the Iraqi political parties to get together and resolve the current crisis in the interests of national sovereignty.