Politics of Iraq
The current President of Iraq is Abdul Latif Rashid, who holds most of the executive authority and appointed the Council of Ministers, which acts as a cabinet and/or government.
The constitution requires that the Council of Representatives enact a law which provides the procedures for forming a new region 6 months from the start of its first session.
[13][14] Legislators from the Iraqi Accord Front, Sadrist Movement and Islamic Virtue Party all opposed the bill.
[14] The northern Kurdistan Region emerged in 1992 with its own local government and parliament officially recognised in 2005 following the adoption of the new constitution.
The United Iraqi Alliance, tacitly backed by Shia Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, led with some 48% of the vote.
The election resulted in a partial victory for the Iraqi National Movement, led by former Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, which won a total of 91 seats, making it the largest alliance in the council.
The State of Law Coalition, led by incumbent Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, was the second largest grouping with 89 seats.
[23] On 15 January 2010, the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) banned 499 candidates from the election due to alleged links with the Ba'ath Party.
[30] Talabani would continue as president, Al-Maliki would stay on as prime minister and Allawi would head a new security council.
On 30 November 2021, the political bloc led by Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr was confirmed the winner of the October parliamentary election.
Al-Fatah alliance, whose main components are militia groups affiliated with the Iran-backed Popular Mobilisation Forces, sustained its crushing loss and snatched 17 seats.
[34] The 2011 report "Costs of War" from Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies concluded that U.S. military presence in Iraq has not been able to prevent this corruption, noting that as early as 2006, "there were clear signs that post-Saddam Iraq was not going to be the linchpin for a new democratic Middle East.
[36] Also in 2003, a "pact" (muhasasa ta’ifa) was struck by "the elite", holding that after a national election, the winning parties divide the ministerial positions in direct relationship to their success at the ballot box.
[37] After 2003, a second agreement (muhasasa) was made, holding that ministries and their budgets and other political positions must be proportionally placed under the "control" of "religious [or sectarian or ethnic] groups", "depending mostly on a group’s size", presuming such "groups" to be fully represented by one or several parties or lists taking part in the elections,[38] or that national governments should "represent the different ethnic, religious and sectarian identities that make up the Iraqi society", presuming that such "identities" are expressed or represented by existing political parties.
[39] This incompetence caused mismanagement in the successive Iraqi governments of Al-Maliki (2006–2014), Al-Abadi (2014–2018),[45][40] and also Abdul-Mahdi (2018–2020),[42][37] leading to hundreds of billions of dollars being wasted on failed projects and the neglect of electricity networks, the transportation sector, economic legislation, and other infrastructure,[45] as well as citizen demands not being responded to.
[40] Such incompetence – next to other forms of political turmoil like corruption (see next subsection) and instability – is considered by many analysts to have also fostered the rise of ISIL, in 2014.
Such manner of spending state finances has been labeled governmental contracting fraud and structural political corruption: not the general public but privileged companies were being served by the government.
[40] Since the adoption of the new Iraqi constitution in 2005, federalism with a heavy emphasis on decentralisation has been the official model of governance in Iraq.
[52] According to a report published by The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a U.S-based think tank, since Kurdistan Region’s failed bid to gain independence, the federal government has been severely punishing it both politically and economically.
In gradual steps, the federal government has consistently weakened Kurdistan Region’s ability to administer its own affairs by revoking crucial authorities that had previously defined its autonomy.
[53] Furthermore, since it won a pivotal ICC arbitration case, the federal government has also been refusing Kurdistan Region access to its most important source of income, namely, oil exports, and the latter has had no other option but to concede.
