Mutlaq: the politician, the victim and the sectarian

not long time ago, an Iraq spe­cial­ist in body lan­guage, wrote a piece try­ing to ana­lyze the Iraqi politi­cians body move­ments, she referred to this video clip ana­lyz­ing Mutlaq’s move­ments, and this is what she said:

His big dis­ap­point­ment can be noticed in the con­trac­tion of the facial mus­cles, which con­trols his speech. He is very con­fused in defend­ing him­self, indi­cates that he is aston­ished with the speed of events development.

The move­ment of the neck mus­cles when he men­tions Iran indi­cates his rush in bring­ing Iran to the talk, even if the ques­tion is not about Iran. The soft tone of the voice at the begin­ning of of the senses indi­cate his con­fi­dence but the reflex of his right-eye mus­cles shows that he is always con­cerned about what hap­pens next.

You can notice his dis­ap­point­ment in today’s report in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat quot­ing Al-Mutlaq: “Arabs on the side­lines .. Iran dom­i­nates the situation”

Arabs had to under­stand this mes­sage and deal with it, but they stayed as spec­ta­tors, at the same time Iran con­tin­ues to be the mas­ter of the situation

In another inter­view on Al-Majala, Al-Mutlaq con­tin­ued the same accu­sa­tions say­ing that Iran dic­tated the deci­sion to exclude him from the elec­tion, but the inter­est­ing part he said that Maliki is not behind the Jus­tice and Account­abil­ity deci­sion, and he don’t even know about the decision.

- Do you think that this deci­sion have already been issued by the Com­mit­tee, or dic­tated polit­i­cal bloc(s) behind the Committee?

- When I heard this deci­sion, the Pres­i­dent called me per­son­ally and told me that he was sur­prised by this deci­sion, and even the Vice-Presidents appeared on the media and denied pre­vi­ous knowl­edge of this deci­sion. The Prime Min­is­ter “Nuri al-Maliki,” phoned me and he swore that he did not know about the decision!!

Prob­a­bly, Maliki didn’t know about the deci­sion but he sup­ported the deci­sion, the next day after the Com­mit­teee took its deci­sion Maliki’s hench­man Al-Adeeb said the fol­low­ing: “We don’t want those who demand the return of 40 Baathists in the com­ing par­lia­ment. ~ Al-Hayat 12 Jan­u­ary 2010

A very child­ish answer when the jour­nal­ist asked him: “Why Iran tar­gets you only and not Allawi for exam­ple?”, he answered: “because I crit­i­cized Iran more than Allawi”.

The deci­sion of the Com­mit­tee reflects the size of the polit­i­cal insta­bil­ity in the Iraqi arena. The Iraqi regime’s mar­gin of manou­ver is pushed in an tiny cor­ner, there­fore it takes irra­tional deci­sions, includ­ing the exclu­sion of 499 polit­i­cal can­di­dates from par­tic­i­pat­ing in the elections.

The ques­tion here, is the hyp­o­crit­i­cal nature of the polit­i­cal blocs par­tic­i­pate in the polit­i­cal process, even Mut­laq, who decide to “play” sec­tar­i­an­ism if he is the vic­tim, in his first reac­tion on the cri­sis telling Aljazeera: “This deci­sion will mar­gin­al­ize the Sunni Arabs”, and sec­u­lar before the cri­sis telling Al-Arabiya: “My Party is a sec­u­lar nation­al­ist bloc, has noth­ing to do with sec­tar­i­an­ism and sectarian”.

It seems that Mut­laq still don’t know the iden­tity of his polit­i­cal bloc, is it a sec­u­lar bloc or a sec­tar­ian one? but what we are sure of:

- Mut­laq par­tic­i­pated in all polit­i­cal processes of elec­tions under the occupation.

- Was a mem­ber of the Polit­i­cal Coun­cil for National Security.

- Voted in favor of the secu­rity agree­ment and the strate­gic frame­work agree­ment with the occu­pa­tion (SOFA).

- Still main­tains friendly rela­tions with most of the lead­ers in the Gov­ern­ment and the polit­i­cal process such as Barzani, Al-Hashemi, Tal­a­bani and Maliki whom he met reg­u­lary dur­ing his pres­i­dency of the Coun­cil of Ministers.

- He and polit­i­cal bloc joined a coali­tion with Ayad Allawi, who is known with his rela­tions with the U.S. occu­pa­tion forces and the West­ern and regional intelligence.

Best reac­tion on the whole cri­sis is said Abd Mut­laq Al-Jibouri, mem­ber of Maliki’s “State of Law”, and also excluded by the Committee:

Salih Al-Mutlaq, is not new to the polit­i­cal process and if it was an issue of “de-Baathification”, then Salih Al-Mutlaq, was among those who wrote the Con­sti­tu­tion and voted on the Con­sti­tu­tion, he is one of those who voted in favor of the SOFA and a joint in the polit­i­cal process before me or any­body else.

Al-Jibouri ended his speech with:

If he [Mut­laq] is excluded by the Com­mit­tee, but why the other 70 can­di­dates in his list?

And this is the impor­tant ques­tion, the Jus­tice and Account­abil­ity Com­mit­tee tries not to answer.

P.S.

Some par­ties are cel­e­brat­ing this cri­sis because it is enough to post­pone the elec­tion. but post­pone or not, the cri­sis will end by exclud­ing the leader of the polit­i­cal blocs only.