The upcoming confrontation, Maliki and the Kurdish Coalition

Maliki wanted to change the con­sti­tu­tion few days ago [although he was a mem­ber of the par­lia­ment com­mit­tee that super­vised the writ­ing of the con­sti­tu­tion]  because:

Basi­cally, respon­si­bil­ity should be given to the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, which under­takes build­ing and pro­tect­ing the country,

Ques­tion­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion means:

- The rela­tion­ship between the Kurds and other Iraqi polit­i­cal com­po­nents is very close to another phase of inter­nal conflict.

See­ing Maliki’s attempts to improve his rela­tions with Sadrists, raises some doubts that Maliki wants to split the United Shi­ites Alliance into: Al-Hakim’s Supreme Coun­cil with its Kur­dish Coali­tion alliance — and Maliki’s Dawa Party with the Sadrists alliance [other small par­ties, and the tribal coun­cils] .

- Maliki is deter­ment to strengthen the power of the cen­tral gov­ern­ment at the expense of local (sub) admin­is­tra­tions, while there is no real admin­is­tra­tion except the Kur­dis­tan Regional Gov­ern­ment, Maliki has repeat­edly com­plained about the pow­ers of the cen­tral gov­ern­ment before, but this is the first time he directly referred to the con­sti­tu­tion, call­ing­for new con­sti­tu­tional adjust­ments to fit his ambi­tions of the polit­i­cal, mil­i­tary, secu­rity and finan­cial powers.

While the Kur­dish Coali­tion will try to use their regional rights in the con­sti­tu­tion to resisted Maliki’s attempt to change it, Maliki will use the con­sti­tu­tion itself as a frame­work allows for amend­ments that he wishs to obtain.

The future of the Iraqi scene will take one of these three tracks:

- The Kur­dish Coali­tion will try a mech­a­nism to over­throw Maliki through a no-confidence vote in the par­lia­ment. This option is nearly impos­si­ble because of the dif­fi­culty of obtain­ing enough votes to achieve an absolute major­ity in the parliament.

- Maliki will try to change the con­sti­tu­tion. The Supreme Islamic Coun­cil has thirty seats and Kur­dish coali­tion Fifty-three seats add to this the Islamic Union of Kur­dis­tan five seats. In total are eighty-eight MP’s. The­o­ret­i­cally, no chance to stand against the amend­ments because the other 2/3 are about 183 seats. If we assume that every mem­ber of the par­lia­ment will have a clear posi­tion from the amendments.

- Con­tin­u­ing the tense sit­u­a­tion and the dead­lock until the next par­lia­men­tary elec­tion and the emer­gence of new polit­i­cal map.