Harlan Huckleby
02-13-2008, 09:07 PM
Iraqis are finally starting to put a country together. It has taken a painfully long time, but I think this is big news.
Iraqi Lawmakers Pass 3 Crucial Laws
By ALISSA J. RUBIN, Published: February 14, 2008
BAGHDAD — Iraq’s parliamentary leaders on Wednesday pushed through three far-reaching measures that had been delayed for weeks by bitter political maneuvering that became so acrimonious that some lawmakers threatened to try to dissolve the legislative body.
More than any previous legislation, the new initiatives have the potential to spur reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites and set the country on the road to a more representative government, starting with new provincial elections.
The voting itself was a significant step forward for the Iraqi Parliament, where even basic quorums have been rare. In a classic legislative compromise, the three laws, each of which was a burning issue for at least one faction, were packaged together for a single vote to encourage agreement across sectarian lines.
“Today we have a wedding party for the Iraqi Parliament,” said Mahmoud al-Mashadani, the speaker, who is a Sunni. “We have proved that Iraqis are one bloc and Parliament is able to find solutions that represent all Iraqis.”
But the parliamentary success was clouded because many of the most contentious details were simply postponed, raising the possibility that the accord could again break into rancorous factional disputes in future debates on the same issues.
The three measures are the 2008 budget; a law outlining the scope of provincial powers, a crucial aspect of Iraq’s self-definition as a federal state; and an amnesty that would apply to thousands of the detainees held in Iraqi jails.
An amnesty law was one of the so-called benchmark measures that the Bush administration had built the 2007 troop increase around, hoping to create better security to allow such legislative breakthroughs.
The vast majority of the 26,000 prisoners being held in Iraqi jails are Sunni Arabs, some of whom have been held without charges for months.
That made the law a driving issue for Sunni lawmakers and the Sunni co-vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi.
The budget measure was closely guarded by the Kurds, who wanted to maintain the Kurdistan regional government’s current allocation of 17 percent of the country’s revenues after subtracting the costs of ministries that serve the entire country, like Foreign Affairs and Defense. That is a larger portion than most lawmakers felt was fair, and the point will be renegotiated next year, when the whole battle could well be re-enacted.
Similarly, the provincial powers law, which includes a provision requiring that provincial elections be held by Oct. 1, will be difficult to carry out unless the Parliament approves a new election law and fills a number of vacant election commission seats at the provincial level. Those details have been contentious in the past.
But on the abstract level, a law to increase provincial powers has been supported by members from all three major factions, Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds, all of whom have fought for less central governmental authority, albeit in different ways.
The three measures were put to a vote as a single package and passed Wednesday afternoon. There were 206 legislators of the 275-member body at the session, according to the Parliament’s press office.
Each article of each measure was voted on individually, with some lawmakers walking out when items they had opposed came up. But almost everyone returned in time for the final package vote.
The jubilation at the conclusion of the session and the atmosphere of amity contrasted sharply with the stinging accusations and walkouts that have characterized many of the negotiations in recent weeks.
Khalid al-Attiya, the deputy speaker and an independent Shiite, beamed as he told reporters right after the vote that the laws had passed “unanimously.”
“It is a big achievement,” he said, and promised that approval of the budget and spending associated with it would translate into as many as 700,000 new jobs for Iraqis.
Parliamentarians estimated that the overall budget for the fiscal year would reach 60 trillion Iraqi dinars, roughly $50 billion, of which more than two-thirds would go toward salaries and labor expenses.
Even factions that did not agree with some of the measures said they did not want to vote against the package as a whole.
“The Iraqiya list did not want to create a political crisis in a time when the country has suffered a lot, “ said Aliya Nesayef, a member of the Iraqiya Party, which agreed with the amnesty law but was uncomfortable with some provisions of the budget and the provincial powers law.
The decision to vote on the three laws together broke the logjam that had held up the legislation for months, despite pressure from the Bush administration and some senior Iraqi officials. Every group was able to boast that it had won, to some degree. After the laws are approved by the Presidency Council, in this case a pro forma step since all of the political blocs agreed to their passage, they will be published. The particulars of the laws remained unclear in part because many changes were made in the last frantic days.
The most serious controversy on Wednesday was over the inclusion of a date for holding provincial elections, which President Bush has pushed for in the short term. Such elections would mean that two political parties, one Shiite and one Sunni, would stand to lose control of one or more provincial councils, so those groups have tried to defer the vote. But the majority of the Parliament supported setting a date, and Mr. Mashadani, the speaker, forced the inclusion of a deadline, Oct. 1, at the last minute.
The top American officials in Iraq, Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker and Gen. David H. Petraeus, issued a statement after the passage, congratulating the Parliament and describing the provincial powers law, in particular, as a “landmark law” in which “Iraqi legislators have reached an historic compromise.”
But they sought to cover themselves in the event that poison pills were buried in the details of the laws. That was the case in January, with the passage of a law that was billed as a way to bring more Sunni Arabs into government jobs but that later appeared to have provisions that would actually force out at least as many as it brought in.
“There is also still more to learn about how this legislation will be implemented,” said the statement on Wednesday by Mr. Crocker and General Petraeus.
One example is growing concern over the election commission that has been set up to organize provincial elections. There are allegations that the political parties have divided up the seats on the commission by party, but that not all parties ended up with a place at the table, raising questions about whether a vote will be viewed as fair or merely deepen divisions.
And, still left out of the political bargain are the newly formed Awakening Councils, which are predominantly Sunni and in many cases represent powerful tribes. They have taken the lead in fighting extremist Sunni groups, and now their leaders are clamoring for a place at the table. They are outraged that the Iraqi Islamic Party, which is Sunni but has limited grass-roots support, dominates the provincial council in Anbar Province.
“In Anbar Province we want the provincial council disbanded and another one formed, we want elections to be held in March or April and we want the Iraqi Islamic Party to leave the province in 30 days,” said Sheik Ali Hatem, one of the leaders of the Anbar Awakening, who survived a suicide bomb attack earlier this week.
On the amnesty law, much will hinge on the formation of a “competent committee” which will be charged with reviewing cases that had languished without review or charges. But detainees accused of any one of a long list of crimes would be excluded from the amnesty.
How the committee chooses to interpret the word “accused” — whether in the formal sense of charges being filed or the informal sense of people suspected of connection to such crimes — could alter considerably how many people remain in jail. Human rights experts said that at least on its face, the law appeared to have been written to free a large number of people.
Several legislators emphasized after the voting on Wednesday that achieving true sectarian reconciliation was far more complex than simply passing a law.
“Reconciliation will hang on more than a law, it needs political will,” said Mithal al-Alusi, a Sunni legislator. “I believe there is no political will to achieve reconciliation. The law of amnesty is good, but not enough.”
Iraqi Lawmakers Pass 3 Crucial Laws
By ALISSA J. RUBIN, Published: February 14, 2008
BAGHDAD — Iraq’s parliamentary leaders on Wednesday pushed through three far-reaching measures that had been delayed for weeks by bitter political maneuvering that became so acrimonious that some lawmakers threatened to try to dissolve the legislative body.
More than any previous legislation, the new initiatives have the potential to spur reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites and set the country on the road to a more representative government, starting with new provincial elections.
The voting itself was a significant step forward for the Iraqi Parliament, where even basic quorums have been rare. In a classic legislative compromise, the three laws, each of which was a burning issue for at least one faction, were packaged together for a single vote to encourage agreement across sectarian lines.
“Today we have a wedding party for the Iraqi Parliament,” said Mahmoud al-Mashadani, the speaker, who is a Sunni. “We have proved that Iraqis are one bloc and Parliament is able to find solutions that represent all Iraqis.”
But the parliamentary success was clouded because many of the most contentious details were simply postponed, raising the possibility that the accord could again break into rancorous factional disputes in future debates on the same issues.
The three measures are the 2008 budget; a law outlining the scope of provincial powers, a crucial aspect of Iraq’s self-definition as a federal state; and an amnesty that would apply to thousands of the detainees held in Iraqi jails.
An amnesty law was one of the so-called benchmark measures that the Bush administration had built the 2007 troop increase around, hoping to create better security to allow such legislative breakthroughs.
The vast majority of the 26,000 prisoners being held in Iraqi jails are Sunni Arabs, some of whom have been held without charges for months.
That made the law a driving issue for Sunni lawmakers and the Sunni co-vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi.
The budget measure was closely guarded by the Kurds, who wanted to maintain the Kurdistan regional government’s current allocation of 17 percent of the country’s revenues after subtracting the costs of ministries that serve the entire country, like Foreign Affairs and Defense. That is a larger portion than most lawmakers felt was fair, and the point will be renegotiated next year, when the whole battle could well be re-enacted.
Similarly, the provincial powers law, which includes a provision requiring that provincial elections be held by Oct. 1, will be difficult to carry out unless the Parliament approves a new election law and fills a number of vacant election commission seats at the provincial level. Those details have been contentious in the past.
But on the abstract level, a law to increase provincial powers has been supported by members from all three major factions, Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds, all of whom have fought for less central governmental authority, albeit in different ways.
The three measures were put to a vote as a single package and passed Wednesday afternoon. There were 206 legislators of the 275-member body at the session, according to the Parliament’s press office.
Each article of each measure was voted on individually, with some lawmakers walking out when items they had opposed came up. But almost everyone returned in time for the final package vote.
The jubilation at the conclusion of the session and the atmosphere of amity contrasted sharply with the stinging accusations and walkouts that have characterized many of the negotiations in recent weeks.
Khalid al-Attiya, the deputy speaker and an independent Shiite, beamed as he told reporters right after the vote that the laws had passed “unanimously.”
“It is a big achievement,” he said, and promised that approval of the budget and spending associated with it would translate into as many as 700,000 new jobs for Iraqis.
Parliamentarians estimated that the overall budget for the fiscal year would reach 60 trillion Iraqi dinars, roughly $50 billion, of which more than two-thirds would go toward salaries and labor expenses.
Even factions that did not agree with some of the measures said they did not want to vote against the package as a whole.
“The Iraqiya list did not want to create a political crisis in a time when the country has suffered a lot, “ said Aliya Nesayef, a member of the Iraqiya Party, which agreed with the amnesty law but was uncomfortable with some provisions of the budget and the provincial powers law.
The decision to vote on the three laws together broke the logjam that had held up the legislation for months, despite pressure from the Bush administration and some senior Iraqi officials. Every group was able to boast that it had won, to some degree. After the laws are approved by the Presidency Council, in this case a pro forma step since all of the political blocs agreed to their passage, they will be published. The particulars of the laws remained unclear in part because many changes were made in the last frantic days.
The most serious controversy on Wednesday was over the inclusion of a date for holding provincial elections, which President Bush has pushed for in the short term. Such elections would mean that two political parties, one Shiite and one Sunni, would stand to lose control of one or more provincial councils, so those groups have tried to defer the vote. But the majority of the Parliament supported setting a date, and Mr. Mashadani, the speaker, forced the inclusion of a deadline, Oct. 1, at the last minute.
The top American officials in Iraq, Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker and Gen. David H. Petraeus, issued a statement after the passage, congratulating the Parliament and describing the provincial powers law, in particular, as a “landmark law” in which “Iraqi legislators have reached an historic compromise.”
But they sought to cover themselves in the event that poison pills were buried in the details of the laws. That was the case in January, with the passage of a law that was billed as a way to bring more Sunni Arabs into government jobs but that later appeared to have provisions that would actually force out at least as many as it brought in.
“There is also still more to learn about how this legislation will be implemented,” said the statement on Wednesday by Mr. Crocker and General Petraeus.
One example is growing concern over the election commission that has been set up to organize provincial elections. There are allegations that the political parties have divided up the seats on the commission by party, but that not all parties ended up with a place at the table, raising questions about whether a vote will be viewed as fair or merely deepen divisions.
And, still left out of the political bargain are the newly formed Awakening Councils, which are predominantly Sunni and in many cases represent powerful tribes. They have taken the lead in fighting extremist Sunni groups, and now their leaders are clamoring for a place at the table. They are outraged that the Iraqi Islamic Party, which is Sunni but has limited grass-roots support, dominates the provincial council in Anbar Province.
“In Anbar Province we want the provincial council disbanded and another one formed, we want elections to be held in March or April and we want the Iraqi Islamic Party to leave the province in 30 days,” said Sheik Ali Hatem, one of the leaders of the Anbar Awakening, who survived a suicide bomb attack earlier this week.
On the amnesty law, much will hinge on the formation of a “competent committee” which will be charged with reviewing cases that had languished without review or charges. But detainees accused of any one of a long list of crimes would be excluded from the amnesty.
How the committee chooses to interpret the word “accused” — whether in the formal sense of charges being filed or the informal sense of people suspected of connection to such crimes — could alter considerably how many people remain in jail. Human rights experts said that at least on its face, the law appeared to have been written to free a large number of people.
Several legislators emphasized after the voting on Wednesday that achieving true sectarian reconciliation was far more complex than simply passing a law.
“Reconciliation will hang on more than a law, it needs political will,” said Mithal al-Alusi, a Sunni legislator. “I believe there is no political will to achieve reconciliation. The law of amnesty is good, but not enough.”