Thursday, May 19, 2005

After the formation of the government, a greater task is awaiting the National Assembly which is drfting Iraq's permanent constitution of course.
So we have decided to run a series of updates on this blog (hopefully daily) to keep you informed about all the developments, obstacles and successes related to this important process.
Today will mark the beginning of this series:

In what appears like an attempt to override the disputes created by the low number of Sunni law makers included in the "constitution writing committee"; a number of new initiatives to allow more influence for the Sunni in writing the constitution are on the horizon.

What seems to be the most acceptable initiative is one I read about in the morning papers of today; it suggests the establishment of an additional constitutional committee from Sunni Arabs.
Abbas Al-Bayati, a member of the Assembly form Jafari's block said that "when we reach an agreement on adopting this plan as a solution, then we will move to the other step of choosing the members of this committee".

This basic idea is that this committee-when formed-will include 14 Sunni law experts and politicians who are going to have the same rights and authorities of the other 55 members of the current "constitution writing committee".
If this is going to happen, the Sunni will have a total of 16 seats out of the 73 seats of the two constitutional committees collectively, i.e. around 22% which is supposed to be close to the percentage of Sunni people among the population in Iraq.

More later.

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