Sadr City, Baghdad, July 2005. Wikicommons/ CPT photo. Some rights reserved.The weeks to come will see Iraq-watchers bracing themselves while the ever-unpredictable political circus of Baghdad politics plays out. Iraq's parliament is out of session until Sunday, after Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi presented his new fourteen nominations for his sixteen-member technocratic cabinet last Thursday. The objective of this list of nominations is to rid the governing cabinet of vested interests; a streamlined technocratic cabinet was seen as the substitute solution.
Parliament will have a total of ten days to vote on Abadi's nominations this coming Sunday. This decisive move, which caused political upheaval in all of Iraq’s politics blocs, has been made in the face of rampant corruption. Abadi now faces a dangerous battle with an Iraqi political elite that deploys government resources to strengthen their patronage networks. They fear anti-corruption measures will weaken their influence.
PM Abadi has already faced a political backlash for his proposed controversial cabinet reshuffle. Recently re-elected head of the influential Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), Ammar al-Hakim, has demanded, “if we have a totally technocratic cabinet, then PM Abadi must be a non-partisan technocrat or PM Abadi must go”.
