.comment-link {margin-left:.6em;}

Born at the Crest of the Empire

Sunday, July 08, 2007

Maliki to face a no confidence vote July 15?

I know this rumor has been popping around for awhile, but this iteration has a firm date on it. CBSNews is reporting that a group of mainly Sunni legislators intend to call for a no confidence vote in Maliki on July 15.
That has led senior Iraqi leaders to demand drastic change. CBS News has learned that on July 15, they plan to ask for a no-confidence vote in the Iraqi parliament as the first step to bringing down the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.


Presumably, this approaching deadline is why Maliki is desperately trying to create a new "moderate" governing coalition, and why he has suddenly spoken very publicly against Sadr's Mahdi Army. (Sadr's group has been trying to build its own Iraqi nationalist coalition to replace Maliki and may well vote no confidence.)

The politics of this could get disastrously messy. Regardless of the larger affiliations, if you were an Iraqi parliamentarian, would you really want to go on the record supporting this Maliki government?

My guess is that if they kill it, they will try to do so by denying a quorum. I don't know their parlamentary procedure, but I would assume that this would also deadlock any other pending legislation.

As of today, the Iraqi parliament is still planning to take their month long August break.

Later: Can't find the link, but neither Sunni VP Adnan Dulaimi or a Sadr spokesman would go on the record for or against a no confidence vote. When asked, both blasted Maliki and the current government, but didn't specifically answer yes or no.

Here's the BBC and Iraqslogger on the very hot Maliki/Sadr split.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home