Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

Donate

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Email
  • RSS
  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2023 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Uncategorized

Al-Hashimi Vetoes Voter Bill; US military Suicides Spke

Juan Cole 11/19/2009

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email
0 Shares

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, who is a Sunni Arab, has vetoed the election law recently passed by parliament. Iraq has a president (currently a Kurd, Jalal Talabani) and two vice presidents (the other is Adil Abdul Mahdi, a Shiite from the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq). Al-Hashimi reportedly dislikes being call the “Sunni vice president,” but that is certainly how he acted with his veto. In the Iraqi constitution, the president and the two vice presidents function as a “presidential council” who are supposed to decide whether parliamentary legislation should be approved or not. Iraqi practice has been to read the constitution to require that the presidential council pass legislation unanimously, creating a veto power for each of the three members.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki (from the Shiite fundamentalist Da’wa or Islamic Mission Party) criticized al-Hashimi’s move, calling it a “dire threat” to the political process. He asked the Iraqi High Electoral Commission to continue to prepare to have elections in January. The Commission, however, announced that it was halting all arrangements for the election “without delay.” But the High Electoral Commission instead said that it was ceasing preparation for the elections, scheduled for mid-January.

The move threatens to postpone the elections and even to create a political vacuum and create a constitutional vacuum.

Al-Hashimi said he did not intend to veto the bill in toto, just the part of it that specifies that Iraqis in exile abroad will fill only 5% of seats. Since there are thought to be over a million Iraqi refugees in Syria and Jordan, and since most are Sunnis, this provision reduces the weight of the Sunni Arabs in the election. Al-Hashimi wants the proportion of seats set aside for expatriates and religious minorities set at 10% or 15% instead.

Al-Zaman writing in Arabic stressed that Gen. Ray Odierno said that no big decisions about the pace of American withdrawal have to be made until spring, 2010, so that a slight delay in the holding of the parliamentary election would not much affect US troops.

Aljazeera English has an interview with VPTariq al-Hashimi:

Reidar Visser has more on the electoral crisis.

Meanwhile, US military suicides are headed for a record, provoking dismay and puzzlement at the Pentagon.

Russia Today interviews Adam Kokus, an Iraq War veteran, on the spike in US military suicides:

End/ (Not Continued)

Filed Under: Uncategorized

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Primary Sidebar

STAY INFORMED

Join our newsletter and have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.

Twitter

Follow Juan Cole @jricole or Informed Comment @infcomment on Twitter

Facebook



Sign up for our newsletter

Informed Comment © 2023 All Rights Reserved

Posting....