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Posted on 08/26/2007 12:40:01 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Updates with Islamic Party official's denial)
By Waleed Ibrahim
BAGHDAD, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Iraq's prime minister said on Sunday the country's biggest Sunni Arab political party had agreed to join a new alliance with Shi'ites and Kurds to end political paralysis, but a top official of the party denied it.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, under pressure from the United States to show progress towards national reconciliation, said the Iraqi Islamic Party of Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi would join the alliance of moderate Shi'ite and Kurdish parties.
The party has rebuffed overtures by the four leading parties in Maliki's government of national unity to join them, saying such alliances were not the answer to Iraq's political crisis.
It has, however, been in talks with other parties to try to break the political impasse and reach agreement on thorny issues that have pushed the government to the verge of collapse.
"Today there will be a joint statement, not from only the four parties but also the Islamic Party. There will be five parties, not four. This final statement will include a summary of all points of agreement," Maliki told a news conference.
Omar Abd al-Sattar, a member of the Islamic Party's political committee, said he was mystified by Maliki's comments.
"As a member of the party's political bureau I can tell you that we are not part of any deal made with these four parties," he said.
The U.S. ambassador to Iraq has questioned the credibility of an alliance that did not include Sunni Arabs in trying to further national reconciliation between Iraq's warring Shi'ite Muslim majority and Sunni Arab sects.
The new alliance aims to shore up Maliki's government and would have a big voting bloc in parliament.
Iraq's coalition government has been paralysed by infighting between political parties, which are deeply mistrustful of each other and reluctant to make compromises.
Nearly half of Maliki's cabinet has walked out, accusing the Shi'ite prime minister of sectarianism.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed and millions displaced in an explosion of violence triggered by the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in the town of Samarra in February 2006.
U.S. forces in Iraq have been boosted to 160,000 to give Maliki's government time to reach a political deal.
But none of the political benchmarks set by Washington have been met -- laws on sharing Iraq's oil revenues, setting a date for provincial elections and easing restrictions on former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party serving in the military and civil service have not yet gone to parliament.
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Limbo. Let’s wait for definitive confirmation. We all have high hopes.
The p[roblem with all these parties is their lack of depth. They just don’t go down to the grassroots.
Well, at least there is some arm twisting going on....
bfl...
If the Sunnis don’t join and get with it and we end up pulling out they are going to wish for one way tickets to hell over staying in Iraq.
The Sunnis have one option. The only reason the Sunnis in the triangle are still there is because of the US presence protecting them. I think some are realizing that, which is why we see a shift amongst Sunnis. They would have to be insane not to realize the hell they bring on themselves if the US is forced out of Iraq.
I have to laugh when our politicians talk about “paralysis” or “lack of cooperation” or “no progress” or “adjourning for summer vacation” or some such in Iraqi government - have they taken these from the headlines of papers about their own performance and of their own governance?
I don’t see Iraqi democratic government being “paralyzed” any more than our own republican one. If anything, the transition from brutal tyranny to reasonably stable democracy in Iraq happened far more quickly than probably anywhere else on this planet in the last quarter millennium.
they have to keep the “goal posts” in Iraq all the time, in order to show that there is no “progress” - of course, the same strategy is used here at home if they are not in charge.
Unless Iraq has become a Garden of Eden and there are no problems at all (real or imagined) our missions (original - to remove Saddam as a threat to region and later one - to kill and capture al-Qaeda and other jihadists) failed.
And of course, all our problems at home (post-Katrina efforts, bridge collapsing etc.) are related to lack of people or money that are sent to Iraq...
There's a reason for that. We made the mistake of giving Iraq multi-member electoral districts. Each district has several representatives in Parliament, with each Party being represented in proportion to the number of votes the Party slate received. The result is that the elected "representatives" don't actually represent the people in their district. Instead they represent, and are loyal to, the Party bosses who put them on the slate.
In a single-member district, such as we have almost everywhere in the US, the candidates have to appeal to a majority (or at least a plurality) of voters in their district. They must find ways to attract voters of differing views. Compromise is essential. In a multi-member district, the candidates are under no compulsion to reach out to all the voters, or to make compromises.
I saw the same thing when I was living in Turkey. I paid attention to it, because at the time I was Republican Party Chairman in my county, so I was interested in comparing Turkish party organization and elections with my own experience back home. I came to realize that any form of "proportional representation" is a disaster. It isolates the elected "representatives" from the people they are supposed to represent.
I commented on this to one my faculty colleagues. He had received his PhD at MIT. He told me that while a student there he had written to Senator Teddy Kennedy about some matter dealing with US-Turkish relations, stating clearly that he was not an American citizen but thought his views would be helpful. He said he got a nice letter back from Kennedy's office. He said that if he had written a letter to one of his "representatives" in the Turkish Parliament, it would have been thrown away unread.
IAC. the Government is in large part the government we created. The Constitution creates a weak prime minister, one more like a premier of the French Fourth Republic than the British Prime minister. We helped create parties based on the Sunni, Shia. Kurd denomination (on the last of which is more or less unified). I would have reverted to the old Turkish divisions based on three major cities, with division lines running east to west. Each of these would have been divided into constituencies that mixed populations and interests. That way each pol would have represented real people and real turf. not just the other members of his party.
Probably true. But they are making adjustments, some of them fast, as did we over period of time : it took us decades for Constitutional Amendments, Civil War (War between the States), selection / elections of Senators, gerrymandering of electoral districts (to suit the one party or another) and involvement of courts in election politics and redistricting as well as other things we thought courts had no business in - like fighting wars and foreign policy.
So they will catch up in time and adjust according to their culture and wishes, and it seems like they are doing an expedited course. IAC, I doubt that most of our current (and more outspoken on the subject) elected government representatives have much to lecture Iraqis about the way democratic government works.
The reality is Maliki appears yet again to being lying. Either that or they all had some form of agreement then the Sunni Arab Party decided to welsh on the deal, or simply play Maliki for a fool.
I don’t see Iraqi democratic government being “paralyzed” any more than our own republican one. If anything, the transition from brutal tyranny to reasonably stable democracy in Iraq happened far more quickly than probably anywhere else on this planet in the last quarter millennium.
Excellent post. So true.
While the Dems are still calling this a civil war, with the Sunnis joining the fight against al-Qaida, the factions within Iraq are more united than they've been in a thousand years.
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