More than 6,100 candidates have officially launched their campaigns in Iraq (عربي) for spots in the country's 325-seat parliament.
The campaigning so far excludes Salah al-Mutlak and Dhafer al-Ani, two well-known Sunni members of the Iraqiyya coalition. Ali Faysal al-Lami, the head of the Justice and Accountability Commission, announced last night they they're banned from the March 7 election because of their alleged links to the Ba'ath party.
Two people were killed, and 11 others wounded, in a bombing in northeastern Baghdad -- the second bombing today in the Iraqi capital. An earlier explosion was caused by a bomb hidden in a garbage can in Adhamiyah.
(Updated below) Iraqi vice president Tariq al-Hashimi has officially objected (عربي) to part of Iraq's new election law, which effectively vetoes the law as it is currently written.
Al-Hashimi, you'll recall, raised concerns this weekend that the law is unfair to the 2 million Iraqi refugees living overseas.
His objection sends the law back to Iraq's parliament, which must now approve Al-Hashimi's amendments and send them off for ratification.
Okay, as promised, some more detail on this afternoon's "Iraq in 2020" panel at the Middle East Institute conference. The whole concept was something of a conceit -- as a reader pointed out, there's a lot of uncertainty about Iraq in 2010 -- so most of the panel focused on shorter-term concerns.
I complained earlier about the lack of focus on economics. The panel mostly focused on politics and diplomacy -- how Iraqis will reconcile internally, and how they'll relate to their neighbors (and the U.S.) externally. What really struck me was the divergence between the American panelists, who tended to be more optimistic about the future, and the Iraqi panelists, who seemed pessimistic about intractable problems of Iraqi governance.
One of the best things about leaving town for the weekend is coming home to 681 unread items in Google Reader. Oy. I flagged a bunch of items that looked interesting, and I'll try to catch up on blogging them over the next few days.
The biggest news this weekend was the Iraqi parliament's long-overdue vote on a new election law. The law passed, setting the stage for parliamentary elections on Jan. 16, 2010.
Aswat al-Iraq reports that the Iraqi parliament has reached a deal on the election law. The final remaining issue had been Kirkuk's voter registration list. Lawmakers reportedly agreed to use the 2009 voter list, a decision favored by Kurdish lawmakers; in return, Arab and Turkmen parties will receive an extra seat from the "national seats" bloc of the Iraqi parliament (see this PDF for an explanation of Iraq's complicated parliamentary structure).
The full parliament will vote on the compromise measure on Saturday. They would have voted today, but... not enough lawmakers showed up to declare a quorum.
I think I was right to temper my enthusiasm about yesterday's reported deal on "special status" for Kirkuk in the election law.
The status issue might be resolved, but there is still no progress on which set of voter registration lists to use in the January election, according to Aswat al-Iraq. The Iraqi parliament's leadership wants to use the 2009 registration list, but Arab and Turkmen lawmakers are vehemently opposed to that proposal, which would likely increase the Kurdish vote.
Parliament now appears to face a hard deadline for passing the election law: The head of Iraq's election commission, Faraj al-Haidari, says the law has to be approved by Thursday night. If not, he says, it will be impossible to hold the vote as scheduled on Jan. 16.
Iraqi MPs tell the BBC they're still not ready to vote on an election law. A vote could be held in several days, they say, but "several sticking points remain."
The issue of voter registration rolls in Kirkuk is the biggest one. MPs are still trying to reach a consensus between several competing proposals (2004 voter rolls, 2009 voter rolls, some mix of the two), according to Aswat al-Iraq.
Laith, one of McClatchy's Iraqi bloggers, reports that more than half of Iraq's 275 members of parliament did not show up for today's session, which was supposed to cover the election law. The parliament couldn't declare this a formal session because it didn't have a quorum.
When the "unofficial" session started, the election law wasn't even on the agenda, according to Aswat al-Iraq.
There were some optimistic reports yesterday after Iraq's national security council reached a compromise on the election law. The parliament discussed that draft yesterday -- and couldn't reach an agreement, according to the New York Times.
The NYT reports that legislators reached "broad general agreement" to use open lists instead of closed lists. I'll believe that when I see it -- many politicians support open lists in public but, in private, prefer closed lists, which give more power to political party bosses.
The wire service Aswat al-Iraq reports (عربي) that Iraq's national security council has reached a breakthrough on the election law.
No surprises here: The Iraqi parliament failed, yet again, to pass an election law.
Rod Nordland reports in the New York Times that the parliament has declared itself at a stalemate. The parliament speaker, Ayad al-Samarraie, adjourned the assembly until Sunday. Kirkuk is still the main issue.
Iraq's electoral commission says it needs 90 days to prepare for the vote. We're already inside that mark: When parliament returns on Sunday, the scheduled January 16 election will be just 83 days away.
12:26 p.m.: Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) wants to know how de-Baathification is going, because it "caused a lot of problems" with Sunni Arabs. Odierno says the parliament "needs to go back and pass some more legislation" to loosen up the de-Baathification laws.
Coffman then asks about Shi'ite militias. Odierno:
You don't see militias that control areas. What you have now is militant groups that don't control areas, but conduct attacks for different reasons... they continue to be a threat, but... their influence has been significantly reduced as to what it was from 2007 and 2008.
Odierno also says Iran is providing less assistance -- but more targeted assistance -- to those Shi'a groups.
One of McClatchy's Iraqi bloggers, Jenan, wonders what Iraqi parliament members do to deserve their $20,000-per-month salaries.
The Iraqi parliament started its final legislative season one week ago and after four useless sessions they decided to have new vacation for two weeks. What an exhausting job that our representatives have in the Iraqi parliament after the occupation! It's the best job in the world.
I would say the Iraqi parliament is just modeling itself on the U.S., but that would actually be an insult to Congress: Jenan goes on to quote one analyst who says Iraqi MPs work just 24 hours per month.
The ultimate goal of the Iraq troop surge was to create a "breathing space" for the Iraqi political process to move forward. But it's increasingly clear that Iraq's politicians are too lazy, venal or incompetent to make progress on important legislation. That leaves Iraq with a tenuous security situation, a crumbling infrastrucure, a stagnant economy, and a population that's becoming rapidly disenchanted with the idea of democracy.
Absolutely terrible what happened in Baghdad this morning. At least 95 people were killed in bombings across the city, and more than 560 were wounded. (The initial estimate, which we reported this morning, was 45 dead and 300 wounded.)
The pictures coming out of Baghdad show rows of blackened cars, huge craters in the ground, large fires -- terrible scenes.
Six bombs and mortars went off in central Baghdad today, close to several high-profile targets. One bomb shattered windows in the Iraqi parliament building in the Green Zone. Another went off near the Iraqi foreign ministry, just outside the Green Zone; it left behind a pile of blackened cars.
And a truck bomb in Waziriya, near the finance ministry, destroyed part of an elevated highway.
Attacks in Baghdad are still commonplace -- but they rarely go after such high-profile targets. These bombings were obviously designed to send a message about the strength of the Iraqi insurgency.
