After I wrote the below, I just heard Allawi telling Al-Arabiya TV that tomorrow the election law crisis will be solved, and political parties will meet in his party’s headquarter to narrow the differences.
With pressure on Hashimi from all sides (the Americans, Shiite parties, and Sunnis in Kirkuk and Mosul who are threatened to boycott the election) and according to the constitution; tomorrow will be the last day for Hashemi to decide (ten days given for the Presidential Council to decide) one of the three options: 1) approve the new election law. 2) veto the law again. 3) no reaction, and the law will be considered approved automatically.
AL-Sumaria quoted the parliament speaker Ayad Al-Samarai saying that there are two options to solve the crisis (without further detailes), but we have some leaked text reported by Al-Hayat, of the last agreement with Hashimi, and as we all know this is not certain because statements change every minute:
To increase the number of seats in Parliament from 317 seats to 325, which means that the provincial seats (predominantly Sunni) would remain the same before Hashimi’s veto, as well as the Kurdish seats obtained by the amended law will remain the.
But there is one small reminder, if election law approved, there two problems (not related to the current crisis):
- The Political Reform draft, a document forced by AL-Hakim’s INA to be included when the parliament passed SOFA. Al-Hakim said at that time: The new Iraq will not allow anybody to dominate the power, but must prevail to the culture of participation, solidarity and responsibility for all the achievements and failures, and this is the concept of true partnership — Al-Sharq Al-Awsat 07-01-2009.
- The Electoral Code draft, which was submitted by the Presidency Council to transform the Maliki government to a caretaker government until the next election.
P.S.
A good read at Chatham House “Democratic Iraq: Election Fever” (PDF) by Iraq’s affairs expert — Gareth Stansfield