After several weeks of calm, the street wakes up. Demonstrations, cut roads and pickets: the popular revolt in Iraq rumbled again Monday, December 23 in the face of a power in the doldrums and under pressure from its Iranian godfather.
As the government sinks into paralysis between the pro-Iran, who seek to impose their candidate, and the President of the Republic, who makes resistance, the cities of the south are again in a thick cloud of smoke black. Burned tires are blocking traffic, a sign of the fed up of protesters, who want to destroy the whole system, and its politicians.
Thousands cross roads and bridges or in front of administrations, which they close one by one "By order of the people", despite a large campaign of intimidation carried out, according to the United Nations (UN), by "Militias" who even kidnap or even murder activists. Civil disobedience was again declared in Diwaniya, Nassiriya, Al-Hilla, Kout and Amara, all cities in the south of the country, where the doors of schools and government offices remained closed on Monday. As in October and November before the movement faltered, the south of the country was again paralyzed.
Out of breath political system
For Iraqis on the street since 1st October, the political system established by the Americans with the fall of Saddam Hussein, in 2003, and henceforth drowned by the Iranians is out of breath. In sixteen years, they say, the promised economic renaissance has never happened, when more than half of the juicy oil revenues were lost in the pockets of crooked politicians and entrepreneurs. So no question, they continue, that the future prime minister will come from the seraglio.
But the pro-Iran factions, large and influential neighbor of Iraq, acclaim a man: the resigning minister of higher education, Qoussaï Al-Souheil. Faced with them, President Barham Saleh, who has to sign the Prime Minister’s appointment, vows a categorical veto against a candidate who is conspired by the street, a source within the presidency told Agence France-Presse (AFP). And he is not the only one: the turbulent Shiite leader Moqtada Al-Sadr, who holds the first bloc in Parliament, personally refuses Mr. Qoussaï, a former tenor of his movement, who then passed into the camp of his sworn enemy, the former Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, pro-Iran.
To obtain the renewal of the political class they claim, the demonstrators demand an overhaul of the electoral law. The government and the Parliament have painstakingly started the reform of the convoluted system which mixes proportional and ballot of lists, favoring the big parties and their heads of list, unchanged for sixteen years. Protesters want first-past-the-post polls "To guarantee the entry into politics of a new generation that can clean up everything that the ruling parties have corrupted", as a protester in Diwaniya explained.
Parliament is scheduled to meet late Monday afternoon to discuss the electoral law and perhaps discuss the post of prime minister, who had been nominated for almost a week but whose appointment has continued be pushed back. These arrangements with the Constitution accentuate the threat of a return to violence, which has already left nearly 460 dead and 25,000 injured in almost three months, the vast majority of protesters affected by the fire of the police. Many of those injured will remain disabled for life.
