Iraqi parliament restarted its sessions on the last Sunday of December 2007 after a sixteen day holiday for different reasons, but the main one was having seventy members within the pilgrims to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
I was waiting, as most Iraqis, the parliament to do something good to Iraq and its people after having this long holiday, but it was all in vain. Parliament has 33 sessions since April 2006 till December 31. As Iraqis we don't trust Iraqi parliament members or Iraqi council representatives as they did nothing ever since as comparing to the sacrifice being given of the Iraqi people with the benefits they get in return.
We have 275 members who suppose to represent the Iraqi people in their demands and suffering. On the contrary, they have the highest salaries in Iraq or in the world with the incredible privilege they have from houses and mansions, cars, body guards, real states, free tickets to go abroad and above all their space of freedom to go wherever they want to go without taking any kind of permission or telling the government that they go to this place or that one.
They are really careless of the Iraqi people's demands and needs. If we came back to 2006 and 2007 to find out what achievements did the parliament do , we would find nothing. I tried to call some prominent members to have a bit of information of their achievements during the last 20 months of their work in the parliament within Al-Maliki government. I got none of them …really none of them. They suppose to represent Iraqis, but they are not even trouble themselves to answer the phones as they are either switched off or out of the coverage area.
Yes, they are because most of them are not in Iraq spending their time with their families who settle in London, Amman, Dubai, Cairo and Doha or they want to enjoy their time away of their families in Beirut, Paris , Damascus or Rome.I am going to give you just four names that I tried to get before and during writing this blog who are from different blocs .
Ayad Allawi, the former Iraqi prime minister and the head of the Iraqia bloc, was the first ,but he lives in London and I tried to get his number there with negative results even from members of his bloc.
Adnan Al-Duleimi, the head of Twafiq bloc in the parliament, was the second one with the same result having two numbers for him without any answer. I have friends in Jordan who said that he is in Amman now having some accusations against of displacing people and giving haunts for terrorists!!
The third one was Ibrahim Al-Jafari , the former prime minister who ruled Iraq after Ayad Allawi , I tried to get numbers of someone to be in touch with in his hometown London ,but it was worthless. I heard that he made a visit to our new prime minister Noori Al-Maliki in London as the latter is having some medical tests in London hospitals at the present time.The forth one was Rose Shawis , a Kurd member of Kurdstan Democratic Party who is abroad too having this confirmation from his secretary telling me that he might come to Iraq next week!!!
After all that , what do we expect from our parliament to do this year as they only achieved the pension law after 33 sessions within 21 months while they got their pension law ( for four years of working in the parliament ) which is separated from the original one having it done one session having 80% of their current wages !!!
We are waiting for them to approve the budget of 2008 which faces lots of obstacles as it seems it doesn't include any kind of rising salaries for the governmental employees especially for the teachers! We also wait the parliament to approve about 15 laws including the oil and gas law, provincial law and depathification one.
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