january/february 2009

EDITORIAL

• Editor's Column By Rod Macdonell
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In the News

Iraq’s provinces agitating for greater powers

Developments are moving quickly in Iraq. The country is currently witnessing the campaigns of candidates and political parties as 14 of Iraq’s 18 provinces are to hold provincial elections at the end of January 2009.
By the end of 2009, citizens will also be voting in national elections, the first since Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki came to power in 2005.

Iraq’s provincial map may also be changing in the near future. A bill to allow the mergers of provinces, thereby creating new regions with greater powers, was passed in Iraq’s parliament in 2006 with a slim majority.

The 2006 law also allows an individual province to gain greater powers by becoming a region. Because of opposition from nationalist-minded parties, the implementation of the bill was subject to an 18-month freeze. That waiting period ended in April 2008.

The first region to capitalize on this law could be a single province, Basra. The most complex and challenging constitutional development is taking place in this oil-rich province.

In an example of bottom-up federalism reminiscent of the agreement between Spain’s central government and the region of Catalonia, the people of Basra launched on Dec. 15, 2008, a petition seeking to hold a referendum to transform its governorate into a region with greater powers.

The leader of a major Shia party, Abdul Aziz al Hakim, had hoped that, like the Kurds and their autonomous region of Kurdistan, he could reign over a nine-province, Shia-dominated super-state in Southern Iraq, leaving behind a skeletal Baghdad government.

But his dream has faded, largely because of his party’s poor relations with nationalist parties, tribes, secularists and others in the South, especially in the province of Basra,

By the middle of January, if 10 per cent of Basra’s 150,000 eligible voters sign the petition, a referendum will be held on whether Basra can become an autonomous region.

According to recent statements by proponents of autonomy, they do not intend to interfere with the central government’s authority over the administration of the oil sector.

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