Friday, March 03, 2006

Mesopotamia…amid a political storm.

As we predicted in our Wednesday post, Jafari's visit to Turkey did complicate the political process in a bad way.
It's not news that from the beginning, Kurds, Sunni and secular blocs weren't comfortable with the UIA's nomination of Jafari but the latter's latest suspicious step pushed them to declare their opposition and officially ask the UIA to nominate someone other than Jafari to head the cabinet.

Of course the UIA rejected this request, Jawad al-Maliki the Dawa party 2nd man said on TV today that the "UIA will not change their candidate and the other parties will have to accept our choice".

The Kurds, Sunni and seculars will still have a chance to force the UIA to replace Jafari because their votes are necessary for approving the cabinet.
What really worries me here is that the UIA knows this mechanism which is stated in the constitution yet they refuse to change their mind which makes one suspect they have no intention to compromise and they want to do some arm-twisting telling the others to 'either accept Jafari or face the danger of halting the entire political process' .
They're playing a very dangerous game that only those who don't care for the unity of the country would dare play.

The feeling that the UIA does not care much for a united Iraq is not something I made up, because this is what newspapers that speak for the UIA are saying. Here are 5 points that al-Bayina al-Jadeeda listed yesterday and described as the "demands of the people of the south".

1-Accelerating the political process and rejecting any opposition for the will of the Umma and forming the government according to election results.

2-Reforming the judicial system and dismissing the corrupt judges and working on punishing the Saddamists, terrorists and Ba'athists.

3-The Kurds must refrain from confronting the will of the Umma as they shared the suffering with us during the days of the past regime.

4-Ousting the Saddamists from the political process and this must include those who speak in Saddam's language.

5-The people will cut off the riches of the south from the Saddamists and the Kurds and anyone who opposes the will of the Umma.


Point #2 is actually much more dangerous than it may seem to the foreign reader; replacing 'corrupt' judges with 'good' judges cannot be done overnight because it requires years to prepare judges. This point is in fact a hidden call for replacing civil courts with Sharia courts because Sharia courts headed by clerics are way faster in making decisions and executing the unwanted elements; just like Muqtada's Sharia courts in Najaf executed dozens people in a matter of days.
Also note that in the last point the terms south and Kurds are geopolitical terms which make me believe that "Saddamists" here refers to the Sunni center.

The UIA always say that the choice of the majority must be respected and I see nothing wrong in this principle but in this case the leaders of the UIA are contradicting themselves and are violating the very same principle they long defended.
They are forgetting (or pretending to be forgetting) the fact that the calls for replacing Jafari reflects the will of the majority represented by the Kurdish, Sunni and secular blocs which collectively have 53% of the seats in the parliament.

The UIA have made it clear that what they want is to either rule the whole country in the way like or rule part of Iraq in the way they like; more precisely in the way their religious references in Najaf and Tehran.
I'm not sure if you're familiar with this but did you know the internal charter of the SCIRI states that the party reports to the Murshid, who currently is Khamena'i?

What makes me cynical about the UIA is that the Shia parties endorse taqiyya which allows them to express false attitudes other than the ones they really adopt for the sake of preserving the 'faith' until they are strong enough to declare their real hidden stance.

They can prove this is a wrong impression; they still have the chance to accept sharing power with others and make compromises.
Unfortunately that seems unlikely at this point.

1 comment:

Order Pills Antibacterial said...

I will be your frequent visitor, that's for sure.