Source: Xinhua News Agency
The Iraqi Council of Representatives reconvened on the 18th to elect a new speaker, but it ended in vain due to serious differences among the factions. Now, more than half a year after the ouster of Mohammad Habshi, the former speaker of the Iraqi National Assembly, a new speaker has not been elected.
The political situation in Iraq has been in turmoil since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Analysts believe that the United States is trying to use the Western system as a model to build Iraq into a so-called "model of democracy in the Middle East". However, the fact is that Iraq, under the intervention of the United States, has fallen into a political chaos in which ethnic antagonism has intensified and factional contradictions have become more and more difficult to reconcile.
Members of parliament attend a meeting of the National Assembly in Baghdad, Iraq, October 13, 2022. Xinhua News Agency (Photo courtesy of the Iraqi Council of Representatives)
The Speaker continues to have a "difficult birth"
The Iraqi Council of Representatives had 329 seats, and 311 members attended the day's meeting. Salim al-Sawi, who is backed by Sunni political groups, and former speaker of parliament, Mahmoud Mashhadani, are the main candidates in this election. Al-Sawi received 158 votes and Mashhadani received 137 votes, neither of which received a majority. During the meeting, there was a fierce quarrel among the parliamentarians, and the first deputy speaker of the Iraqi National Assembly, Mandarawi, had to adjourn the meeting.
An article on the website of the Saudi Arabian Daily "Arab News" pointed out that this vote is the closest to the election of a new speaker of the Iraqi Council of Representatives so far.
Under Iraqi law, if a candidate for Speaker fails to obtain the support of a majority of the seats, another ballot is required on the candidate.
On November 14 last year, the Supreme Court of the Islamic Federation issued a statement saying that the court ruled to terminate Habshi's parliamentary qualifications because former Speaker of the House of Representatives Habshi used illegal means to force other members of parliament to resign.
In January this year, Iraq's National Assembly convened to elect a new speaker. After the first round of voting, no candidate received a majority of the votes. Sources told Xinhua that the second round of voting, which was supposed to go ahead, could not be held smoothly due to political differences between different factions, and then Mandarawi announced an adjournment.
This is a photo of a demonstrator in eastern Baghdad, Iraq, on October 5, 2019. Xinhua News Agency (photo by Khalil Dawood)
The political situation has been turbulent one after another
In 2003, the United States brazenly invaded Iraq under the pretext of "democracy and freedom" on the grounds that "Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction". For more than 20 years, the country's political situation has been hit by frequent "earthquakes". The delay in the election of the speaker of the House of Representatives is another example of the turbulent years of Iraq's political chief.
After the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the U.S. military in Iraq and the anti-American forces in Iraq fiercely confronted each other, and sectarian conflicts in Iraq intensified.
In 2011, the United States hastily withdrew its troops from Iraq, leaving Iraq with a "security vacuum" and the Syrian crisis, which was also tinged with sectarian conflicts, spilled over into Iraq. The extremist group Islamic State seized the opportunity to gain power, seizing large swathes of western and northern Iraq in 2014.
In 2016, Iraq was again hit by a political crisis. Demonstrators demanding a reshuffle of the government stormed the "Green Zone", where government institutions are located, and seized parliament, while some lawmakers fled the capital, Baghdad, and Baghdad entered a state of emergency. In the years that followed, mass protests took place in Iraq.
In October 2021, Iraq held elections for a new National Assembly, but due to the irreconcilable differences between various political factions, the positions of president and prime minister were both "difficult to deliver", and the state of anarchy lasted for more than a year. More than a year of political stalemate has not only seriously hampered the advancement of the national agenda, but has also led to social unrest and even bloodshed.
This is a December 31, 2019, photo of demonstrators setting fire to a security room outside the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq. Xinhua News Agency (photo by Khalil Dawood)
The legacy of U.S. intervention
After the overthrow of Saddam's regime, the United States used its democratic system as a model to forcibly promote the so-called "democratic transformation" in Iraq, trying to build it into a "model of democracy in the Middle East". Under the leadership of the United States, Iraq has established a political decentralization system based on a quota system, in which the presidency is held by Kurds, and the prime minister and speaker of parliament are Shiites and Sunnis, respectively. It is precisely this political system imposed by the United States on Iraq that has plunged the country into political chaos of ethnic antagonism and sectarian strife for a long time.
Li Ruiheng, a researcher at the Center for Middle East Studies at Peking University, pointed out that the real purpose of the United States in building a sectarian system of decentralization in Iraq is to prevent Iraq from once again becoming a force that can challenge US hegemony in the Middle East through the mutual containment of various factions. For Iraq, this system of decentralization does not protect the interests of the various factions, but rather provokes internal chaos.
Nazim Ali, an Iraqi political analyst, said that the "strategy" of the United States is to control Iraq and other resource-rich countries by creating contradictions and conflicts.
According to a 2023 survey report released by Gallup, 72% of Iraqis said they did not believe that "the United States really encourages the establishment of democracy on the ground", and 71% of Iraqis said they did not believe that "the United States allows locals to shape their own political future" and that "the United States will work to improve the local economy".
"The imposition of the United States on Iraq through war by imposing its own democratic system with its own bad record has only exacerbated sectarian strife and ethnic tensions in Iraq. It turns out that the United States is not at all for Iraq's 'freedom, democracy, prosperity'. Muhammad Ali, a citizen of Baghdad who lived through the Iraq war, told reporters. (Xinhua News Agency reporter Li Jun Duan Minfu)
(Source: Xinhuanet)