Kataib Hezbollah’s bloc walked out of the vote that made Asaib Ahl al-Haq a deputy premier
Seventeen lawmakers boycotted Thursday’s session, arguing the new ministries were being carved up by party quota while the state cuts spending. The dinar has been devalued almost 15 percent.
Hours before the chamber sat, a cross-party group of 17 lawmakers from the Hoquq Movement, the Badr Organization, Abshir Ya Iraq and Ishraqat Kanun held a press conference inside the parliament building to announce they would stay away, The New Region reported. Shafaq News reported that they were “rejecting the creation of deputy prime minister posts and new ministries that they said were being shared out among parties at a time when the state should be cutting spending.” Saud al-Saadi, head of the Hoqooq bloc — which Shafaq identifies as the political wing of Kataib Hezbollah — said the deal had been struck along the lines of muhasasa, the informal sharing of state posts among parties, and that given regional and financial pressure the government should have slimmed its structure instead. The session convened anyway, with 261 present.
The portfolios at issue were not only vacancies. The New Region reports the session created new posts, including a Minister for Digital Economy, Governance, Science and Technology whose remit covers artificial intelligence, and a state minister role filled by Mehmet Seman of the Iraqi Turkmen Front. The fiscal backdrop is the one the boycotters named: Al Jazeera reports that to cover public spending and salaries al-Zaidi, a former banker, “devalued the dinar by almost 15 percent against the US dollar,” and that before the war Iraq exported roughly 3.5 million barrels of oil a day through the Strait of Hormuz, generating 90 percent of government revenue. Al-Zaidi told parliament the regional conflict had posed exceptional economic and security challenges, The National reported.
Assessment: Read the two halves together and Thursday looks less like a Shia bloc consolidating than a Shia bloc pricing itself. Asaib Ahl al-Haq took a deputy premiership; Kataib Hezbollah’s political wing refused to be in the room. The armed factions did not act as one, and the public argument between them was about distribution, not about the state’s monopoly on force. Note also what changed between Monday and Thursday: The New Arab reported a pre-vote deal of nine ministers and four deputy premiers; the chamber delivered eleven and three. Two extra ministries bought something. Nobody in Baghdad has said what.