Iraq: a crisis of constitutional entitlements... a crisis of a political system

The early elections that took place on the tenth of October 2021 produced an unprecedented situation regarding the relations of political forces between the political parties, particularly the armed ones, which imposed a number of overlapping problems that revealed the crisis of the political system in Iraq!

Facts have proven that no one in Iraq is bound by what the constitution says or decided by laws. The Iraqi constitution gave the Independent High Electoral Commission the upper and exclusive hand with regard to elections, and the Commission’s law decided that objections and appeals related to elections, are handled by a discriminatory judicial body consisting of three judges. Discrimination assumes that their decisions are final and not subject to appeal, yet no one paid any attention to all of the above!

The issue here is not only about political forces, but the authorities of the state itself. The election law, for example, decided that one of the conditions for nomination for membership in the House of Representatives is that the candidate should not be covered by the accountability and justice law related to belonging to the Baath party. whose decisions are supposed to be "final and final" as stipulated by law, ruled that 168 of those excluded from running for elections should not be included!

After the announcement of the preliminary results of the elections, it was assumed that the tripartite judiciary, once again, will be the final arbiter in this matter, and its decisions are “final” as recognized by law! But the Federal Court accepted the case presented by the coordination framework without having jurisdiction over judicial decisions issued by bodies formed in accordance with the law whose decisions are final and not subject to appeal, as the Federal Court decided itself in dozens of issues, and waited more than a month to announce, in the end, It is not within its jurisdiction to consider such a suit in the first place! Excessively, this time, by overstepping its powers and competencies, and the same logic, to turn from a responsible person to a legislator when it decided “the necessity” of amending the election law “and adopting a system of manual counting and sorting instead of electronic counting and sorting”! It was clear to everyone that this delay in deciding a legal axiom, was for political purposes represented in allowing time for the political parties to reach a political consensus!

There is a constitutional article that stipulates that the President of the Republic shall be elected within thirty days from the date of the first session of the House of Representatives (this was on January 9, 2022). Indeed, the Presidency of the House of Representatives on the next day announced the opening of nominations for the position of President of the Republic, as required by law. Then it set February 7 as the date for the presidential election session. But the Federal Court entered the line of crisis to decide first to issue a state order on January 13 to stop the work of the elected Presidency of the House of Representatives, before returning and rejecting the original case related to this on January 25. And to issue another state order on February 6, i.e. one day before the scheduled session, we decide to postpone the session of electing the President of the Republic temporarily until the case related to the candidate Hoshyar Zebari is decided! Without the Federal Court noticing that it is thus violating an explicit constitutional provision that the President of the Republic must be elected within a period of thirty days!

After the parliament’s presidency issued a decision to open the door for candidacy again for the position of the President of the Republic, in clear violation of the law of the provisions of the nomination for the position of the President of the Republic, the Federal Court completed a series of violations it carried out by its decision to reopen the nomination for the position of President of the Republic, but by a decision of the House of Representatives and not by a decision From the presidency! In clear violation of the constitutional article that specified a period of thirty days to elect the president first! And in another violation of the provisions of the law to run for the post of President of the Republic!

The accumulation of violations committed by the Federal Court can only be understood in its political context, a context that makes the constitution and the law just a tool used to legitimize this political context no matter how deviated and violated!

Today, more than 165 days after the early elections, the obstacle to electing the President of the Republic, which was supposed to be resolved more than 48 days ago, remains unchanged, and there are no indications that this obstacle can be overcome in the parliament session dedicated to electing The President of the Republic scheduled for tomorrow, Saturday, March 26th, especially since the Federal Court’s decision that the quorum for the election session of the President of the Republic should be two-thirds and not an absolute majority, has given the coordination framework and its allies the opportunity to disrupt the ability of the most numerous coalition (which was recently announced under the name “" Alliance to Save the Nation”) to pass its candidate for the presidency, thus ensuring that the new coalition’s candidate for the presidency of the Council of Ministers is not passed. Which proves that the real crisis in Iraq lies in the political system itself, and in its inability to ensure adherence to the constitution and the law, and the crisis of not respecting constitutional timings is only a manifestation of that crisis.