Just a few years ago, Ammar al-Hakim, the head of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, was opposed to this idea but he now supports it. The State of Law bloc, of which al-Abadi is a member, as is al-Maliki, has wanted to form this kind of majority government for years. Both of these groups are Shiite Muslim. However the groups with the most to lose from this kind of arrangement, those who would end up in the opposition simply because, traditionally, they would field fewer voters – that is, the Sunni Muslim and Iraqi Kurdish parties – don’t like this idea, and for obvious reasons. They fear that the Shiite Muslim parties will monopolize power, and sideline other Iraqi communities, passing laws without the help of any other group.
For the majority-government idea to work, Iraqi politics – and Iraq’s voters – would need to be ready to move beyond their tribal, religious and ethnic allegiances. Voters would need to be ready to vote for a politician because he or she has policies they agree with, rather than just because they go to the same mosque or share a language.
Some believe Iraq is ready for this.
“A political-majority government wouldn’t be limited just to Shiite Muslim parties,” argues Nahla al-Hababi, a State of Law MP. “Sectarian alliances are already in the past. In fact, there are major conflicts within the Shiite parties themselves that are bigger than conflicts between the Shiites and the Sunnis, or the Shiites and the Kurds.”
One recent example is the group of MPs who wanted to see Iraq’s Speaker of Parliament, Salim al-Jibouri, kicked out of the job. Although there were some major issues with the political motivations involved, this was a cross-sectarian and multi-ethnic alliance, al-Hababi points out.
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