Over seven months after the elections, Iraq’s parliament has met exactly once, an 18 minute session in which the winning candidates were sworn in and went into recess amid threatened walkouts by the Iraqi National Alliance.
Constitutionally the parliament was supposed to meet in July, but it never happened, with officials delaying the meeting because the first order of business was appointing a new president and no one could agree on who that would be.
Iraq’s Supreme Court has now weighed in, ordering the parliament to meet within the next two weeks, but will it happen? It’s not clear, but a number of members of the Iraqiya bloc are expected to boycott the meeting and no one seems to agree on who the president would be at any rate, meaning the meeting is likely an exercise in futility.
The court seems to hope ordering the parliament to meet will coax the MPs into reaching some sort of deal. It seems it isn’t anywhere near that easy, and the meeting will just be another wedge to drive the factions farther apart.