Tall Order for New Assembly Speaker
He inherits fractious parliament, whose divisions have been exacerbated by his appointment.
Tuesday, 26 May, 2009
Tall Order for New Assembly Speaker
He inherits fractious parliament, whose divisions have been exacerbated by his appointment.
Tuesday, 26 May, 2009
Ayad al-Samarrai’s recent appointment ended four months of wrangling that had left parliament paralysed.
His supporters say the unflappable former engineer who spent a decade in exile in Britain is the best man for bringing order to rowdy assembly sessions.
Critics of Samarrai’s nomination, including the Dawa party of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, say he will use the post to further the aims of his party, which has a record of opposing the government.
Samarrai is head of the Iraqi Accord Front, the main Sunni Arab bloc in parliament which tried unsuccessfully to drum up support for a no-confidence vote against Maliki last year.
In an interview with IWPR, former parliamentary speaker Hajim al-Hassani, who served in 2004, warned Samarrai against getting involved in disputes between parliament and Maliki’s government.
Hassani said the parliament, which is widely considered inefficient, needed to rebuild its credibility. Rows involving the legislature and the executive must be rectified “in a civilised way”, he said.
“It should not look as if the parliament wants revenge on the government or vice-versa.”
Samarrai needs to “adopt a nationalistic outlook to build parliament, instead of supporting his party”, said Hassani.
Dawa party opponents of Samarrai’s nomination said they feared his Iraqi Islamic Party, IIP, was growing too strong.
The IIP is the most powerful entity inside the Iraqi Accord Front. Samarrai’s appointment as speaker gave the IIP control of all key positions informally allocated to Sunni Arabs, including the posts of vice-president and deputy premier.
“We did not object to Samarrai’s personality. We objected to a single party holding several top national posts,” Ali al-Adib, the parliamentary chief of the Dawa party, told IWPR.
“Iraq is in a critical position, a stage of consensus,” he added, indicating that the IIP’s opposition agenda could destabilise parliament.
Samarrai’s predecessor, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, resigned in December, amid widespread outrage at his erratic, inflammatory outbursts.
Though his personal style was highly controversial, analysts say he had the right political credentials for the job as far as the Dawa party was concerned. As a member of one of the smaller groups inside the Sunni Arab bloc, Mashhadani diluted the IIP’s influence.
According to Hamid Fadhil, a professor of political science at Baghdad University, “Maliki’s position will be stronger if he faces several Sunni parties rather than a single party” in parliamentary elections this December.
Opposition to Maliki has grown since he began advocating for a strong central government and cracked down on Shia militias last year. Critics, including wavering allies of the prime minister, have accused him of wielding too much power.
Samarrai has been among Maliki’s harshest critics. After being elected speaker, he said he and his party had no intention of toppling the government. But he also pledged to monitor the government closely, “not as a means to weaken the executive, but to strengthen it”.
Tensions have soared this month with a parliamentary investigation into allegations of corruption inside key ministries.
The inquiry is being led by the Integrity Commission, an independent watchdog. It has already questioned Trade Minister Falah al-Sudani and ordered the arrest of his brothers. Both men had worked as Sudani’s aides and went missing in April, when security forces attempted to arrest them at the ministry.
The inquiry is also expected to examine claims of corruption at the defence and interior ministries.
Dawa party member of parliament Abd al-Musawi said the “investigation with the trade minister is a malicious political move”. He said the coming days would see “more investigations into ministers from the party, aimed at smearing the party’s name”.
Samarrai enjoys the support of several Sunni parties, Kurdish parliamentary deputies and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.
Some parliamentarians say the legislature has become more efficient since Samarrai took the reins three weeks ago, though the changes so far have been relatively minor.
Samarrai dropped the show-of-hands voting system and restored electronic voting, which allows legislators to cast ballots in private. Reports say members of parliament, who have notoriously high absentee rates, are showing up in greater numbers at parliamentary sessions since Samarrai took over.
"The new speaker has... helped restore respect to parliament, which [people] used to poke fun at,” said Qasim Daud, a member of the Shia United Iraqi Alliance bloc.
Parliament currently faces a backlog of sensitive issues.
Chief among them is the matter of resolving territories contested between the Iraq’s Kurds and Arabs. Kurds have pushed for a referendum to be held to determine whether the Kurdistan Regional Government or Baghdad administers oil-rich Kirkuk, a province claimed by Arabs, Turkoman and Kurds.
As Iraq begins to feel the effects of the global recession, economic issues are also set to take priority. Legislation that regulates Iraq’s lucrative oil and natural gas sectors – and allows international investment in natural resources – is expected to be high on the agenda.
The draft law has been floating in parliament for three years, frustrating international investors who are keen to begin drilling in Iraq.
Parliament has already made headway on some less controversial issues such as disputes over water resources shared with neighbouring states.
But some say leaders may try to slow legislation on the bigger issues until parliamentary elections later this year.
"I don’t think the new speaker can live up to expectations,” said Wathiq al-Hashimi, an analyst. “The issues in parliament are thorny and extremely complicated.”
“There’s a short time left in the current term and I don’t think these issues will be resolved. I think they will be left to the new parliament.”
Zaineb Naji, Abduladhim Karim and Hadeel Kamil are IWPR-trained reporters in Baghdad.
