Current situation and the three options

The cri­sis

- The absence of a con­sti­tu­tional pro­vi­sion allow­ing the exten­sion of the Par­lia­ment term until the elec­tions, which means that the coun­try will be with­out a par­lia­ment and Maliki’s gov­ern­ment will turn into care­taker gov­ern­ment until elec­tions are held.

The con­sti­tu­tional cri­sis may extend beyond that if the Par­lia­ment doesn’t amend the Elec­tion Law dur­ing next Jan­u­ary next, which means there will be no offi­cial insti­tu­tion has the author­ity to approve the new amendments.

- Another prob­lem is the need to update the voter reg­is­ter, it was sup­posed to hold the elec­tion accord­ing to the cur­rent record, which has been updated in Sep­tem­ber this year. Post­pon­ing the elec­tions, means that there are Iraqi cit­i­zens who are 18 years old after the new year and enti­tled to vote, but their reg­is­ter is approved.

- Although the main objec­tive of Hashimi’s posi­tion is to mod­ify the num­ber of com­pen­satory seats in the Par­lia­ment, but there is another point which is as impor­tant as the pre­vi­ous points, which is:

The mech­a­nism of cal­cu­lat­ing the extra votes among the major par­ties (or those who achieved the high­est rates in the election).

Hashimi left the door open on this issue say­ing that IHEC can mod­ify the com­pen­satory seats with­out the need to refer to the Par­lia­ment. Even Hashimi allies and his sup­port­ers will dis­agree with this solu­tion, they will con­sider Hashimi’s point unconstitutional.

Cur­rent situation

Accord­ing to “Green Zone” news­pa­per Al-Sabah, there are three option to deal with the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. before we go through the pos­si­bil­i­ties of these options, there are two things ignored by the media and the politicians:

- Accord­ing to the con­sti­tu­tion, the Pres­i­den­tial Coun­cil can veto a law two times only, the third time if the Par­lia­ment approve the law, then it is auto­mat­i­cally valid with­out the Pres­i­den­tial Coun­cil approval.

- I don’t know why the politi­cians ignored this point, but IHEC already pro­posed a solu­tion for the for the votes of 4 mil­lion Iraqis abroad.

The sug­ges­tion is to cre­ate a sep­a­rate con­stituency for the Iraqis abroad and to be con­sid­ered the “19th province”. The only thing this pro­posal needs is to amend arti­cle 17 in the elec­tion Law.

The options:

- Wait for a response from the Fed­eral Court. The Fed­eral Court already responded that Hashimi’s veto is not con­sti­tu­tional, but the par­lia­ment spokesman Al-Samari said that the Fed­eral Court’s response was an opin­ion and a manda­tory decision.

- Veto Hashimi’s veto. this is what Maliki asked the par­laimenet to do, this option needs time and absolute major­ity, Al-Sharqiya TV reported this morn­ing that this option failed, another defeat for Maliki. I per­son­ally think that this is more a threat than an option. .

- Amend­ment of the point vetoed by Al-Hashemi. This what Hashimi’s sup­port­ers want, which means more delay in the parliament

The sit­u­a­tion right now is that Hashimi bets on the sup­port Sun­nis, Kurds and sec­u­lar par­ties sup­port Hashimi’s deci­sion, Shi­ite par­ties see it like a dec­la­ra­tion of war, so frus­trated that there are calls to with­draw con­fi­dence from Hashimi in the parliament

It seems that Al-Hashimi will con­tinue to chal­lenge the Shi­ite par­ties, despite the media and polit­i­cal cam­paigns against him.

Hashimi is on a cross­roads, if he stay firm and con­tin­ues his “bat­tle” and not retreat at the last minute (as he always did before, but he said today that he learned a les­son from the con­sti­tu­tion deal, when major par­ties ignored his demands) then he will gain the sup­port of the Iraqi street (and pro­pa­ganda for the com­ing election).

What Hashimi needs to do now is to tackle another Iraqi issue that con­cerns the Iraqi pub­lic (prefer­ably some­thing to do with the Iraqi gov­ern­ment, par­lia­ment or the polit­i­cal process), to use it as a counter attack against his opponents.

I want you also to keep a note of Ammar Al-Hakim’s “soft” posi­tion which is a bit “dif­fer­ent” from his INA’s “aggres­sive” reac­tions, he told the media that he agrees with Hashimi of the right of votes of the Iraqis abroad but he dis­agree to post­pone the elections.

Speak­ing about Ammar Al-Hakim, there are rumors say that he went to Turkey to meet with mem­bers of the Ba’ath Party, both sides (Hakim and Ba’athists) denied these rumors, but a side event makes you think that there is some kind of truth in this.

Arab Par­ties Con­fer­ence, just recently held in Syria with par­tic­i­pa­tion of Iraqi Ba’ath Party, peo­ple saw the speaker of the Ba’ath Party “Al-Murshidi” was very friendly with Hezbol­lah rep­re­sen­ta­tive, both men even walked hand-in-hand, and both del­e­ga­tions exchange hand­shakes (I can prove this if any­body doubts), is Hezbol­lah tries to medi­ate between Ba’ath Party and Hakim? I don’t know..

P.S.