Snap election in Iraq… Crisis exit or reproduction?
The demand of the leader of the Sadrist movement in Iraq, Muqtada Al-Sadr, on Wednesday for his supporters to continue their sit-in in the Iraqi parliament in Baghdad, until their demands, which include the holding of early elections and unspecified constitutional amendments, are met, has raised a wide Iraqi debate between supporters and opponents on the feasibility of reorganizing the elections, in light of the current constitutional and legal contexts and mechanisms regulating them.
Observers and experts believe that these mechanisms need to be amended to ensure that any upcoming election does not duplicate previous ones and merely reproduce the political stalemate that the country has been going through for almost a year.
Iraqi writer and political researcher Raad Hashem said: “There is a general meeting with him by most political blocs on the issue of dissolving the current parliament and agreeing on new elections, but the dilemma lies in going through the details, the legal changes and the mechanisms that guarantee the realization of this demand, as well as the financial allocations. We do not forget the difficulty of convincing local public opinion and the international community about the seriousness and soundness of the second early elections, if it is agreed to organize them, and ensuring the observance and provision of sound constitutional frameworks and the standards of fair democracy, especially after they were scratched before and their results were compromised.”
Hashim continues: “No one can guarantee that there will be no violations or manipulation, with the expectation of a repetition of the same results as the previous elections or near them, and relying on the preponderance of one party or another to rely on the accumulated crises that will settle the body of the political process, which was built on failed foundations from the start, is a fruitless and absurd bet. This requires agreeing on a national contract under international auspices to reform the structure of the process according to national principles governed by a new constitution, or amending the paragraphs of the constitution in force in a way that approximates the requirements of the situation and the needs of the current stage.”
The Iraqi political researcher explains: “There is also another issue that is no less important than the previous issue, which is how to agree on the removal of corrupt faces, what legal criteria will govern the course of this thorny and explosive issue, and what is the role of the judiciary in resolving it, as it is expected that deep problems will develop in this context, even bloody confrontations, and clashes, with many parties owning the armed militias.”
On the other hand, Raed Al-Azzawi, head of the Al-Amssar Center for Strategic Studies said: “In light of this current crisis, Al-Sadr’s call for early elections may be rejected by many other political forces, Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds. Who can guarantee that these elections will bring new solutions to the accumulated political crisis? Will they be held under a broken constitution, of which only 16% has been implemented?”.
Al-Sadr, who is also a professor of international relations at the American University in Cairo, added, “He owns a street, but it is not the entire Iraqi street. He is part of several streets that support different political forces. We do not forget here that about 75% of Iraqis did not participate or vote in the elections in the first place.
Al-Azzawi adds: “In light of all these major obstacles and obstacles, such as political discord and discord, which is now translating into street violence, and a sharp Shia disagreement, it is very difficult to go to early elections, while the last election was less than nine months away.”
Instead, al-Azzawi said, “Political forces must maintain and support the current government and work to prepare for changing some articles of the constitution, especially those that revolve around the definition of a larger parliamentary bloc, so that confusion and confusion regarding such articles, which are referred to the Federal Court for its decision, will be removed, causing sharp differences. Then, a new election law will be passed, and then elections can be held, meaning that we put the Arabs behind the horse and not the other way around, by overcoming the disagreement over the conflicting interpretations of the constitution that led to this chronic political deadlock.”
The Sadrist movement first dissolved 73 of the 329 members of the Iraqi parliament in the October elections, but failed to form a government in the past months.
Al-Sadr then asked his deputies to resign, which is what has already been done. According to the constitution, they were replaced by second-place candidates in their constituencies, which in practice led to the rise of the majority of the Coordination Framework candidates.
On Saturday, however, al-Sadr’s supporters began a sit-in at the Iraqi parliament to express their rejection of the Coordination Framework candidate, Mohammed Shia’ Al Sudani, for the prime minister’s office. They consider him to be a follower of former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, al-Sadr’s main opponent.
