Influential Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s political bloc may have won a plurality of 54 seats in the May 12 parliamentary vote, but they are still a long way from forming a viable coalition that commands a majority of the 329 seat parliament.
Sadr’s initial plan was to form a coalition with Ammar al-Hakim and Ayad Allawi. Those two, however, only mustered a total of 40 seats between them, leaving Sadr to try to come up with 71 more seats for even the slimmest majority.
Not that Sadr has been idle. Last week, he met with Hadi al-Amiri, announcing a political alliance. Amiri, a top militia leader, has a bloc with 47 seats that he can bring on board. That wouldn’t get them to a majority either, and to make matters more complicated, some of the other factions are objecting to Amiri’s involvement, threatening to join the opposition.
Some Kurdish factions are suggesting openness to joining a Sadr-Amiri alliance, which opens up another possible avenue, but again doesn’t guarantee a majority can be cobbled together any time soon.
This has been a recurring theme in Iraqi elections, where forming a majority government is often a long, drawn-out struggle. This often requires making a lot of promises of power-sharing among the parties to keep them all on board.
This is what happens when you have a parliamentary style form of government. It ensures that someone out of the woodworks who gets majority of seats won’t be able to form a coalition government if they don’t like you, despite being democratically elected.
This form if government has been either imposed or recommended by US everywhere. For as long as NATO controlled generals ruled Turkey with iron fist behind the scene, the parliamentary sham insured feeble governments. Erdogan managed to get Anatolian countryside to back him, starting the process of changing the government from Parliamentary to Presidential. Two military coups later, he is finally getting to the final step, eliminating the office of prime minister, who currently is Erdogan confidante, and is on board. Count in it, our imperial press will decry it as autoritarian, brutal, name it.
Kyrguzstan is another example. After Tulip revolution US “helped” it change constitution. In the most bizzare electoral system ever, no party is allowed to have over 50% majority in polls, and the process of combining party slate candidates, with individual no -party affiliated candidates, cobbling of government is near impossible. What is saving Kyrgjzstsn from turmoil
and civil war is strong presence of both Russia and China in its economy and security. As a member of SCO it is firmly ensconced and suppkrted by other neighbors. What causes problems is the number of parties allowed into Parliament. If one considers the turnout at elections, the resulting coalitions end up representing often less then a quarter of population.
There is no democracy like direct democracy.