A government of technocrats … Is it a solution to the Iraq crisis
On the twentieth of this month, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has requested from the House of Representatives an authorization to form a new government with a technocrat character , who sees a way to resolve the crises of the Iraqi state. We wonder, if the House of Representatives approved the request of the PM , will it be able to overcome all crises of Iraq , or that the crises are deeper than just forming it ?
the Iraqi political process produced , in the post-2003, and the issuance of a new constitution in October , abstract parliamentary political system from theoretical side , but practically it was built , and in a consensus of the partners of political process , on a sectarian and national quotas, as they agreed among themselves that the President of the Republic of Iraq to be from the people of Iraqi Kurdish nationalism, and Prime Minister of the Shiite Arabs and the President of the House of Representatives of the Sunni Arabs .This political consensus and not constitutional, after more than a decade on practicing it , it had brought Iraq at the current stage to the edge of the abyss.
Because this political consensus established Iraqi political structure which is incoherent and inconsistent among the parts of the Iraqi political system, which is reflected negatively on the performance of all of Iraq’s state institutions. Of course, this political consensus did not work on building a democratic state in which the Iraqi people was in a desperately need to it after decades of a totalitarian regime. But it has deepened the crises of the Iraqi political system, especially after the receipt of Nuri al-Maliki as prime minister of Iraq for two successive terms , so with him , Iraq is not only suffering from a crisis or two crises of the crises of known political system in political systems , but all the crises were gathered in Iraq as a crisis of distribution and participation penetration, and in a record period of time not exceeding eight years of his reign.
The crisis of distribution, we mean here the distribution of the country’s wealth to the Iraqi people equally and the distribution is in the form of material and moral values, but this distribution has not been achieved in spite of the oil fiscal revenues earned by Iraq during the period of his rule which has exceeded the hundreds of billions, these funds if were employed by Prime former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki correctly, he could achieve two goals at once, namely the reasonable well-being for the Iraqi people after a period of an international severe blockade imposed on it , as he could also rebuilding the Iraqi state, and this is what has not been achieved during his reign but deliberately to dispel the Iraqi funds in different ways . so the financial corruption was one of the most prominent landmarks during his reign .
Because the Iraqi political system, which was founded after the year 2003, was not a democratic system then surely here the participating crisis was emerging, noting that Instead of pursuing the former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki the openness policy on all components of Iraqi society , but he followed the exclusion and marginalization policy against the Sunni community in Iraq that their fate was either detention or deportation, and his response to their demands to participate in the management of the country is through the use of force, such as the use of excessive force by his troops to break up protests in the Sunni provinces at the end of 2013.
Excessive security policies used by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has led to the emergence of state regulation in Iraq and the Levant “Daash” in June 2014, and then the emergence the crisis of penetration, as the Iraqi government is no longer Since then to control the whole Iraqi soil . As for the identity crisis , it theoretically may be known as Arab identity but in practice , it was on the contrary to it , as Iraq has become a follower to Iran and hostile to Arab environment in his policies.
It can be said that the political consensus application in the Iraqi political system was inspired by also the Lebanese experience based on sectarian quotas on the basis of the Taif Accord as the Lebanese and regional states sponsoring of it agreed for that agreement to be the President of the Republic of Lebanon of the Christian Maronite community, the Prime Minister of the Sunni sect and Head the House of Representatives of the Shiite community, and after more than two decades on the application of the political consensus in Lebanon, it could be judged that it was useless to the Lebanese community and also was useless on the Iraqi society. Both experiences are similar to the question of high important that the Iranian regime has become a significant impact on them .And they differs in the background upon which the political consensus in the Lebanese case the consensus was built on the background of the Lebanese civil war, which lasted nearly fifteen years, but in the Iraqi case , it has been built against the backdrop of the US occupation of Iraq on the ninth of June 2003.
Based on the foregoing, we conclude to say that a government of technocrats, which the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi seeks to form may be provisional cure for some crises in Iraq, which was a creation of former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who left it to the current Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, but would not be a cure for the essence of the crises of the political system of Iraq, because a political system built on the political consensus will not be able to build a state but on the contrary, it may work on the demolition of it , and this is what is happening now in Iraq, so in order to overcome the current crises , it has to exceed the issue of political consensus because the results were disastrous for Iraq and secondly establishes an Iraqi social contract dominated by the Iraqi comprehensive identity and not the sub-identities , to be the Iraqi identity from Zakho to the sea.
Rawabet Research and Strategic Studies Center