But because provincial elections saw power shift from al-Maliki’s own party and partners, and because Baghdad is currently not in total control of some of Iraq’s provinces, including Anbar, the new version of Law 21 is apparently no longer so welcome.
“The Prime Minister has suspended this law in order to reduce the powers of these provinces and to get them under central control,” says Ali Faleh al-Kanaan, public relations officer for the local branch of Iraqi political party, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, to which Basra’s new governor also belongs. “The Prime Minister has done this because he is heading more and more towards centralizing power in Iraq. That is even though most of the projects started in Basra by ministries in Baghdad have not been completed.”
“As a result the governor is facing a lot of obstacles,” al-Kanaan continued. “They have been put there by the central government and by parties in the province who are linked to the central government. There are some who do not want the governor to succeed,” he added.
Currently Basra’s governor al-Nasrawi is putting a lot of faith in international consultants in the hopes that he can avoid mistakes made by former local regimes.
“The presence of foreign consultants should reduce some of the dysfunctional practices here,” said Abbas al-Jurani, a leading member of the local communist party in Basra. “By making them responsible the amount of commissions, paid to people who were supposed to be managing these various projects, will be reduced.”
But al-Jurani isn’t totally sure this new strategy is going to change much because, as he says, “conflicts over the projects have a political dimension, and in fact, those conflicts are often ultimately personal ones.”
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