As the Iraqi parliament moves closer to extending its service term until election results are confirmed, following the Federal Court’s decision to pass a third amendment to the electoral law, confusing the process of forming a parliamentary majority coalition.
Iraq held a parliamentary election May 12. Disputes over the results have protracted coalition building for the next government. More so, the Iraqi electoral commission started a nationwide manual recount of the parliamentary election on Saturday.
Although the Federal Court opting for a recount was expected, in terms of satisfying all parties to the dispute over election results, it has received all sorts of criticism.
Some of the political blocs that relied viciously on announced results were disrupted by the choice to recount votes.
The conflict is now between supporters of manual counting and e-counting.
On the action undertaken by the Iraqi parliament, Diyala-elected MP Salah al-Jabouri told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Federal Court legitimized the open session through which the Parliament initiated the Third Amendment Law for the elections’ recount.
“It is true that the Iraqi constitution set stipulates that a parliament can serve a term of four years at a time, but has not specified whether there is room for extending the serving period or not,” explained Jabouri.
The term of the parliament will expire on June 30, 2018.
“We are facing an unusual situation,” said Jabouri.
“Next week will see a vote on extending the sitting parliament’s service until votes are settled in a matter satisfactory to everyone, which means the possibility of re-elections being held due to widespread violations in several areas of Iraq is likely,” added Jubouri.
“We must differentiate between parliamentary blocs and political alliances, as there is a clear conflation concerning the two,” Political Science PhD holder Dr. Amer Hassan Fayyad told Asharq Al-Awsat.
Fayyad explained that, naturally, all parliamentary blocs almost do not go beyond a monolithic component, whether Shiite or Sunni or Kurdish.
However, blocs do have two or three different sect members, but that only serves as ‘decorative diversity’ to make the bloc seem more national rather than sect-driven, added Fayyad.
