Iraqi political equation begins to take shape

Despite the rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the elec­tion results by the Supreme Court, the ongo­ing debate of the three pres­i­den­tial posts (par­lia­ment, Prime Min­is­ter, pres­i­dent) continues.

For once, it has been con­firmed as almost unan­i­mously by the the three coali­tions that Tal­a­bani should resume his posi­tion as pres­i­dent. This con­for­ma­tion came in speeches made by Maliki, Al-Hakim and Allawi’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the Third Con­fer­ence of the Patri­otic Union of Kur­dis­tan, which started in Sulay­maniyah and con­tinue for four days.

The out come of the above agree­ment means that the coali­tions will fol­low this equation:

Kurds for the pres­i­dency of the state, Sun­nis for par­lia­ment speaker and Shi­ites for the Prime Minister.

There are even signs that Al-Iraqiya started to accept this equa­tion, accord­ing to the lat­est state­ment made Saleh Mut­laq, who said that they [Al-Iraqiya] will accept the Islamic Supreme Council’s coun­cil, Adel Abdul Mahdi as prime min­is­ter. Al-Mutlaq’s state­ment is an impor­tant devel­op­ment in terms of Al-Iraqiya started to with­draw its demand of the Prime Min­is­ter post.

Maliki’s visit to Kurdistan

With what seems to be Maliki’s hasty steps to ensure the Kur­dish sup­port after the grow­ing oppo­si­tion from the Sadrists (accord­ing to INA leader Qasim Dawood: All INA mem­bers refuse Maliki’s nom­i­na­tion for a sec­ond term), the Kurds are con­fi­dent and delib­er­ate in achiev­ing max­i­mum demands that they deem nec­es­sary to ensure their security.

Maliki’s visit to Arbil — Kur­dis­tan is more a per­sonal issue than ral­ly­ing sup­port to his “State of Law” coali­tion. The prime Min­is­ter seeks the Kurds sup­port to re-elect him as a Prime Min­is­ter, and he is pre­pared to offer more con­ces­sions to the Kurds on a series of demands, Kurds put as con­di­tions to nego­ti­ate with any party intend­ing to form a government.

One impor­tant thing, Maliki’s nego­ti­a­tion with the Kurds will not be very easy, because what­ever the PM offers (or already offered, in the last few weeks) to improve his rela­tions with Kurds, still Kirkuk is the main obsta­cle, an issue that will be the focus of dif­fi­cult nego­ti­a­tions between Kur­dish groups and the any other coalition.