Iraq's parliament turns into "circus"

Iraqi state television aired a controversial parliament session from Wednesday today after Sadrists accused the foreign minister's guards of manhandling Ahmed Massoudi, a Sadrist parliament member.

The session on Wednesday was to conduct the second reading of a contested law that would pass or reject a security agreement between the United States and Iraq. The agreement, which passed the cabinet on Sunday, was met with strong opposition from both Sadrist and Sunni legislators. Before it can be implemented  and replace a United Nations mandate, which legalizes the  U.S. led occupation of Iraq until the end of the year, the parliament must pass it with a simple majority.

Now that I've explained the basic boring ins and outs of the situation lets get to the fun stuff. The session made for great television a la Jerry Springer without the baby mamas or illicit affairs. Sadrists, as followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr are collectively called, demanded a new law of agreements before considering the long-term security agreement with the United States. Basically they want a law on how Iraq should handle international agreements.

 Mahmoud al Mashhadani, the speaker of the parliament, ignored the requests and said they needed to move onto the second reading of the law which parliament would need to pass by the end of the year to implement the agreement. That's when things went south.

Sadrists stood waving their hands in the air and banging binders on the desk. Hassan Sneid, a member of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki's party, tried to read the law over the banging and yelling before leaning back in his chair and throwing his arms up in surrender.

He was rendered silent by the uproar and Mashhadani yelled like an overwhelmed teacher unsure how to control his classroom. Parliament members smirked in their seats as women in long black Abayas, the traditional modest dress of religious Muslim women, banged on their desks and yelled

Then the brawl began. Massoudi, one of the Sadrist members, bum-rushed the podium aiming for where the Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Finance Minister Bayan Jaber and Sneid were seated. A guard got in the way and pushed Massoudi out of the way. Other legislators followed, crowding around the podiums yelling and surrounding the speaker and his deputies.

An army of personal guards surrounded Mashhadani and his two deputies and Zebari was rushed out by his guards with what seemed to be a smirk on his face.  After Zebari, Sneid and Jabr left Massoudi swept the plastic flowers, papers and tissue boxes from the table with a few crazed swoops of his arms.

Mashhadani just stood there in the center of the crowd yelling as others yelled louder. First he demanded a recess of one hour then he gave up, encircled by angry legislators. For a few seconds his mouth gaped open.

"Ahhhhhh," he yelled. "Wait! Wait! we'll resume tomorrow at 10 a.m."

He gave a dismissive wave of his hand and his men maneuvered him out of the angry crowd.

The finale of the session was by far the most entertaining. A female Sadrist member shrouded in black walked up to the speakers podium and threw water bottles, notebooks and papers from the desk.

On Thursday the Sadrists banged their binders again but the second reading happened. Entertaining battles or not the parliament must decide by Monday whether or not to reject or agree to the security agreement.

Comments

[baghdadentist]

im an iraqi citizen and saying when that parliament turned into circus? its already a circus,from the first session.they dont represent us in their manners and many ideas. what did the iraqis earn from that parliament except headache? i hope to see qualified people in parliament government.

[Hope]

In the past weeks it has been reported that "thousands" of Shiite are protesting the SOFA agreement. Every time I read about these protests they are painted in such a way as to make it appear that this is an indication of failure for the Iraqi government and for the USA. I see just the opposite.

First, the protests were peaceful protests. They have achieved the right to peaceably assemble! Why, that's great! What do you suppose would have happened to these people if they had attempted to protest under the Saddam Regime? I can hypothesize that there would have been more mass graves. There were security forces around with weapons, waiting for trouble. I have never seen a large protest in the USA where there were not Security forces all over the place incase there is trouble. How anyone can look at these protests as anything other than overt indicator of immense progress is just beyond me.

You now have people protesting for SOFA, Against SOFA and the important thing is, they all seem to want to be at the peaceful assembly. Very different from the times of Saddam when people where forced to go to places and shout phrases that they did not want to say. In parliament, would there have been any words of descent allowed under Saddam? Would there have been debate? With or without banging books? Absolutely not.

These are not indicators of something negative, these are certain signs of wonderfully positive progress! Certainly, there is still much work to be done on the ground by all of the forces involved. There is another election that has to happen where Iraqis will again be able to choose. To CHOOSE. Immense progress, by any standard. Many other people in the world still live under repressive regimes, they hunger and thirst for the chance to engage in a process the way that the Iraqis are certainly now free to.

If the Iraqi people feel that the parliament is ineffective then they need to act by voting accordingly in the next election.

[IceNine]

I saw some clips of the earlier phases--the notebook banging and shouting--but the scrum at the front of the hall was never seen on US television. Thanks for an excellent description of the rest of the scene, Leila.

Before US commentators here post any smug and self-satisfied comments about parliamentary decorum, they would be well to remember some on-the-floor behavior in the US Senate during times of extreme stress.

A notable example: Before the Civil Wa--and on the floor of the chamber--a southern Senator attacked a northern Senator with a metal cane so severely that the latter was crippled for the rest of his life. Plastic flowers and thrown water bottles seem pretty tame in comparison.

[Bohdan Szejner, STL]

Minor skirmishes happen in every parliament and I wouldn't make much of it. Leila should be reporting things of substance, like al-Maliki's inability to fix Baghdad sewers! The Iraqi people deserve better. Al-Sadr is being vindicated by the Iraqi government's cavalier attitude toward human suffering!

[coffee fiend]

they should have "taken it outside..."

[Thomas]

Sounds like normal growing pains for a democracy. Even 80 years after the establishment of democracy in the U.S., American Senators were beating each other on the Senate floor over the issue of slavery. I seem to remember some massive civil war followed. Its all okay.