It is true that Iraq’s politicians have never been too careful about doing as the Iraqi Constitution says.
There are several high profile examples of this, including violations of Article 140 which deals with the disputed territories – that is, territory that both Iraq’s Arabs and Iraq’s Kurdish want to claim as their own. The Constitution says this issue should have been dealt with by the end of 2007. Seven years later, nothing has really changed – even though the Iraqi Kurds have now taken control of some of the disputed territory they have always wanted, thanks to the Sunni Muslim extremists.
In other democracies, constitutional violations such as those practised by Iraq’s politicians would have been punished, early elections would have been called, legal authorities would have stepped in or leaders would have been impeached. But not in Iraq.
And it seems as though now, there are more violations of the Iraqi Constitution than ever. Yet because everyone - from journalists to politicians to voters – is so used to the flouting of laws like this, such violations are simply accepted while politicians only care about who gets the best jobs and most power.
The next session of Parliament is to be held next week – on July 13 – but nobody seems confident about its abilities to find a new Speaker of the House and two deputies.
All of this – combined with the political power vacuum and an illegal government – is not helping to confront the threat posed to the whole country by Sunni Muslim extremist groups. Which may well make them the biggest winners right now. It is fairly obvious that the Iraqi people are not.
Comments are closed.