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The Race for the Iraqi Presidency
13.3.2010
By Michael Hanna |
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March
13, 2010
As post-election maneuvering gets
underway in Iraq, commentators have focused on the
battle for the Prime Minister’s office.
The discussion circles around which electoral
coalition will be tasked with forming the next
government, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s State
of Law list or a potential anti-Maliki front led by
the former prime minister ‘Iyad ‘Allawi and his
Iraqiyya list. But before Iraq even gets to that
point, a seemingly lesser struggle over the
selection of the next president will first have to
be resolved. This process will provide important
clues as to the post-election cohesiveness of
various political blocs and shedding light on the
contours of the broader government formation
process. Will the Kurds retain their cohesion and
return current President Jalal Talabani to another
term, will the Sunni Arab Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi
stake his claim, or will a surprise candidate emerge
in the horse-trading to come?
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Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, a Kurd. |
It is
only after a president has been selected that an
individual from the leading electoral coalition will
be tasked with forming a government. According to
article 70 of the constitution, following the
selection of the speaker of parliament and his two
deputies (itself a consequential parliamentary
decision), the parliament must turn to the task of
selecting a president. If no candidate for the post
is able to secure a two-thirds majority of
parliamentarians in the first round of voting, then
the two leading vote getters will be forced into a
second round of voting that will be decided in a
simple run-off.
Within Iraq’s parliamentary structure, the
presidency was conceived as a largely ceremonial
role, and its clearly-delineated substantive powers
were transitory in nature. With the expiration of
the tripartite Presidency Council, which is composed
currently of a Kurd, a Shiite and a Sunni, and its
legislative veto, the role of the presidency might
take on even greater substantive powers due to the
murky constitutional guidance on the actual powers
of the presidency. With no upper house of parliament
in place resulting in an unchecked parliament, the
incoming president will almost certainly test the
bounds of his power to review and potentially veto
legislation. In this sense, it is hard yet to know
how significant the new president will be.
Current president Jalal Talabani, the leader of the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and a veteran of
the Kurdish struggle against Saddam Hussein, has
played the role of elder statesman with aplomb and
has often sought the role of mediator on the
national stage. The Kurdish control of the
presidency has been an important symbolic victory
for the Kurds in signaling their inclusion in a
heterogeneous post-Saddam order no longer based on a
chauvinistic Arab nationalism.
The Kurds’ privileged role in post-invasion Iraq is
a result of their solidarity on the national stage,
their close relations with the United States, and
early boycotts of the political process by Sunni
Arabs. But their favored status has been eroded as
Sunni Arabs have turned to the political process
more fully and as the discourse of Iraqi nationalism
has found its unifying theme in opposition to
expansive Kurdish claims for power, resources,www.ekurd.netand
territory. As such, the contest to name the
president will be important as a signifier of
parliamentary strength and cohesion, as the prospect
of political fragmentation of the various electoral
lists will shadow the government formation process.
The presidential selection could also be an early
indication as to the likely path for forming a
government.
While Talabani has generally been able to balance
the conflicting demands of statesmanship with the
narrower concerns of protecting Kurdish interests,
it is difficult to imagine any other Kurdish figure
filling this role or garnering the necessary Arab
support to secure it. For some time Talabani had
indicated that he would not seek another term as
president, but in recent days he has announced his
intent to seek the presidency. His decision raises
the stakes of the challenge to the Kurdistani
Coalition (the alliance between the PUK and the the
Kurdistan Democratic Party) from the upstart Gorran
movement.
Gorran, a recently-established party founded by
dissatisfied breakaways from the PUK, indicated
previously that it would oppose Talabani’s
candidacy. Such brash pronouncements were predicated
on the reformist Gorran slate’s shocking humiliation
of the PUK in the June 2009 Kurdistan Regional
Government elections, where it netted approximately
25% of votes and 25 seats. The PUK’s poor showing
tested the resiliency of the KDP-PUK alliance, with
some in the KDP coming to question the wisdom of the
power-sharing agreement between the parties. Much
will now depend on how Gorran adjusts its goals
after what appears to be a less impressive than
expected showing in last Sunday’s parliamentary
elections. If Kurdish cohesion fractures now, the
effect of Gorran’s first challenge could be to
diminish Kurdish power in Baghdad.
Talabani will not lack for rivals. Tareq al-Hashemi,
the Sunni vice president and former leader of the
Iraqi Islamic Party and the Tawafuq bloc who signed
on to the Iraqiyya list, has made it clear that
Iraq’s president should be an Arab—presumably such
statements mark the opening foray in his own quest
for the post. For Hashemi to succeed he will have to
overcome the fragmentation of the Sunni political
community and unite the various leaders who have
dispersed and joined various electoral alliances.
This issue is particularly acute as true
cross-sectarian politics has not yet taken full root
in Iraq, and the lack of communal solidarity in
parliament has played a significant role in further
diminishing the Sunni community’s parliamentary
weight.
With Iraqiyya trying to fashion itself as a vehicle
for Arab nationalist expression that would be the
primary political outlet for Sunnis, the contest for
the presidency will be a test of the coalition’s
ability and, perhaps, more importantly, its
willingness to unify behind a Sunni Arab candidate.
This is a difficult task because of the diffuse
nature of Sunni representation, which could lend
itself to co-optation and deal-making in the coming
weeks and months, particularly as al-Maliki attempts
to woo individuals and sub-lists with the prize of
patronage.
Talabani’s chances to retain the post remain strong
as long as the Kurds provide a united national front
in Baghdad. He will be further aided by the Kurds’
continuing centrality to the process of forming a
government. Al-Maliki would be unwise to try to
unseat Talabani at such an early stage, pushing the
Kurds toward an anti-Maliki coalition. By the same
token, ‘Allawi might very well choose to exercise
his own influence judiciously with a strategic end
goal of the premiership in mind, eschewing the
expenditure of political capital on the contest for
the presidency. Despite his Sunni Arab allies’
wishes, he might be particularly wary of alienating
the Kurds and sabotaging his own chance of becoming
prime minister—but such a course will risk his own
fragile electoral coalition. In this light,
‘Allawi’s opening decision on filling the presidency
will offer an important clue as to his chosen path
for attempting to assemble a parliamentary majority.
In short, while making predictions on Iraqi politics
is often treacherous terrain, the procedural road to
forming a government will aid Mam Jalal’s prospects
for retaining his post and notching an early victory
for the Kurds.
Michael Wahid Hanna is a fellow and program
officer at The Century Foundation.
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
Foreignpolicy com
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