Politics and Law

When it comes to Iraq, it seems like deadlines were meant to be broken and then broken again.  That is how it seems when it comes to elections that had been planned to be held in January and are now being postponed due to an effort by Kurdish and Shiite legislators who hope to take seats away from the Sunnis.  The delays in elections will likely countermine President Obama’s pledge to have all US troops in Iraq home by August 2010.

With a January election very unlikely, some Japanese Translation workers now believe that elections could be moved out as late as March.  While the postponement of elections will undermine the Iraqi constitution, most Iraqi lawmakers are unmoved.   Our Japanese Translator covering this story indicated that in many cases, the Iraqi constitution is often ignored.  In fact, one lawmaker said, “The situation here in Iraq is so screwed up that now that a violation of our constitution seems trivial.”  However, it these types of sectarian differences that contributed to Iraq’s civil war. Unfortunately, our Japanese translator reports that all sects are still strongly divided.

To make matters worse, Sunni legislators recently protested by walking out of a parliamentary meeting while it was in session.  That act is what sparked the Shiite and Kurdish dominated legislature to call for a vote to remove seats in Sunni districts and add them to Kurdish seats.  Thus, it will remove power from the Sunnis and give power to the Kurds.  Apparently, Sunni’s have become enraged by the way their voting districts have been aligned and are threatening to boycott the election.

Unfortunately, our Certified Japanese Translation worker in Baghdad reports that Sunnis are being encouraged to protest in the street.  No matter what happens, the Shiites and Kurds will use their numbers against Sunni group.