“State of Law” and Maliki’s “divide the coali­tions” strategy

Since the nom­i­na­tion of Maliki as the NA (- Al-Hakim’s Shahid Al-Mihrab Orga­ni­za­tion) can­di­date for the Prime Min­is­ter office, the incum­bent Prime Min­is­ter raised the slo­gan of his “com­ing” term as (Secu­rity and Reconstruction).

The “State of Law” instructs many of Iraqi news­pa­pers and media (that tried to hold the stick from the mid­dle, wait­ing for the out­come of the dis­cus­sions and dia­logues about the cri­sis), to start the pro­pa­ganda machine sup­port­ing Maliki as De-facto Prime Minister.

The road map

Nuri Al-Maliki’s road map for the Prime Min­is­ter office (each point is a cri­sis itself):

- Call for the Iraqi par­lia­ment to meet in order to select the new Prime Min­is­ter (that is after the Par­lia­ment meet­ing to appoint the President).

- Seek to obtain the total num­ber to sup­port Nouri al-Maliki, in par­tic­u­lar within the National Alliance, and specif­i­cally the Supreme Coun­cil and Al-Fadhila Party.

- The need to obtain the sup­port of the Kur­dish Alliance through a new deal with Tal­a­bani – Barzani.

- The need to resolve the sit­u­a­tion inside the par­lia­ment next meet­ing, which requires the fol­low­ing from Maliki:

1– The abil­ity to keep and main­tain the sup­port of the Sadrists.

2– The abil­ity to for­mu­late a bal­anced deal with the Kur­dis­tan Alliance.

3– The abil­ity to con­vince Wash­ing­ton, who stip­u­lated the need for the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Al-Iraqiya List in new gov­ern­ment. This point means that Maliki needs to work one of these two options:

A– To con­vince Al-Iraqiya’s leader Allawi to par­tic­i­pate, which is dif­fi­cult for the time being, because of the high demands of the List.

B– To split Al-Iraqiya List through per­sua­sion, and per­haps lure some mem­bers of the List to sup­port Maliki for the Prime Min­is­ter post.

State of Law (139) needs (163) votes in the Par­lia­ment to win the Prime Min­is­ter office (that is +24 votes). If Badr orga­ni­za­tion MPs (11 votes) give their votes to Maliki, this will be (150).

Note:

Al-Hayat reported the fol­low­ing yesterday:

The Supreme Coun­cil wants a num­ber of offi­cial posts inside the Prime Minister’s office, just like the Sadrists, two ser­vice min­istries at least, as well as to head the Intel­li­gence Ser­vice or the Anti-terrorism office.

Al-Fadhila’s Party (7 votes) rejec­tion to Maliki is easy to solve, because their only demand is; a min­is­te­r­ial office (that is 157 votes).

“State of Law” and the Kur­dish Alliance

The great­est dif­fi­culty faces Al-Maliki will be his abil­ity to con­vince the Kur­dis­tan Alliance (Maliki still needs the Kurds to block Allawi’s attempts to form the gov­ern­ment), this is because offer­ing the Pres­i­dent office is no longer an issue for the Kurds, Tal­a­bani, Kur­dis­tan — Barzani came to see that the Pres­i­dent post for the Kur­dis­tan Alliance is beyond discussion.

Maliki needs to offer more con­ces­sions to the Kur­dis­tan Alliance, and for sure Kirkuk will be one of many.

If Maliki agrees to hand-over Kirkuk to the Kurds, he will face seri­ous con­se­quences, at least the with­drawal of the Iraqi National Alliance’s deci­sion to sup­port Maliki’s can­di­dacy (espe­cially, the Sadrists).

Note:

Al-Hayat reported today, the following:

Maliki had agreed on the 18 points from the 19 points “list of demands”. The point that Maliki rejected, and asked to mod­ify it, is point 18 from the list: The gov­ern­ment will resign, in case the Kur­dish Alliance with­draws its ministers.

Maliki’s “divide the coali­tions” strategy

Since yes­ter­day, Maliki started one of the most dif­fi­cult phases, which is; Dis­man­tling his rival coali­tion, through their weak­est points.

Maliki chose the weak­est link in the National Alliance, and decided to pay a visit to Al-Fadhila Party.

Dur­ing his visit, and in a press con­fer­ence, Maliki called his oppo­nent Iyad Allawi to sit at the nego­ti­at­ing table and make obser­va­tions on the pre­vi­ous period. A call directed to the weak­est link in Al-Iraqiya List rep­re­sented by Tariq Al-Hashimi (who wants to con­tinue as Vice-President) and Rafie Al-Issawi (who wants to be the Par­lia­ment Speaker).

Next, we will see the “Kur­dis­tan Alliance” and “Al-Iraqiya List”