It can be argued that if Iraqiyya cannot work with Maliki, they should seriously consider reverting to a more honest, purely opposition role from which they could speak their mind instead of producing convoluted statements of the kind presented by Damluji yesterday. If not, Iraqiyya and indeed the Kurds should be aware of an alternative scenario that is probably on Maliki’s mind every now and then: Building a majority with all of the Shiite Islamists (currently around 158) plus White Iraqiyya (10) and defector elements from Iraqiyya and then pretend to act as Iraqi nationalists and centralists. A sort of Shiite-led version of the old regime perhaps.
The more Iraqiyya continues to stultify itself with statements like the recent ones on the oil and gas bill, the greater the probability for defections from within their own ranks. In turn, Maliki’s alternative plan, without the Kurds and Iraqiyya, could gradually become less and less utopian. Maliki may well be hoping that as time passes by, such an alternative will emerge and will eventually allow him to take a more centralist position vis-à-vis the Kurds on disputed territories and not least on the symbolically important city of Kirkuk. The Kirkuk issue is more immediately understood by the Iraqi public than complex legal oil issues and is a question where neither Maliki nor Allawi may be able to give the Kurds all they want.
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