Parliamentarians from the Sadr Bloc vowed that they would resist
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's plans to dismiss 5 out of 6 cabinet ministers from their party. The Sadrists have 32 seats in the Iraqi legislature, and their support was key to the election of al-Maliki last spring.
KarbalaNews.net reports in Arabic that al-Maliki gave an interview in which he said that high judicial authorities are preparing indictments against members of parliament for involvement in militia and death squad activity. Maybe al-Maliki thinks he does not need the Sadrist MPs because so many of them will soon be in prison. Indeed, the scale of the indictments against sitting Iraqi representatives and officials hinted at by al-Maliki suggests a judicial coup. Given that Sunni and Sadrist MPs have been loudest in denouncing the new oil law, if large numbers of them were incarcerated, it would also make it easier for al-Maliki to get the legislation enacted. There are no mechanisms for by-elections to the Iraqi parliament to my knowledge, so that the parliamentarians that are arrested will likely not be replaced until late 2009. The arrests could dramatically alter the relative proportion of representatives of various communities. No Kurds will be arrested, since their Peshmerga militia has been legalized, so their bloc will be strengthened.< -- Jim Devine / "The truth is more important than the facts." -- Frank Lloyd Wright
