Partial agreement on Iraqi constitution

[southsider2k5]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/08/15/...n.ap/index.html

[Balta1701]

Update...they've officially Missed the deadline for the Iraqi Parliament to pass the constitution. The National Assembly has passed by unanimous vote a 1 week extension for continued work on it.

 

What does this mean? As far as I can tell, it means that the Iraqi National Assembly has just voted the Interim constitution into abeyance.

 

Stealing liberally from Prof. Juan Cole:

 

Now Iraqi politicians are talking about having parliament amend the interim constitution to allow a delay of say, two weeks. In fact, according to the Transitional Administrative Law, if the committee did not ask for an extension by August 1 (which it was pressured not to do by the Bush administration); and if the parliament did not approve the new constitution by August 15; then parliament should be dissolved.

 

This is the text::

 

    61 (G) If the National Assembly does not complete writing the draft permanent constitution by 15 August 2005 and does not request extension of the deadline in Article 61(F) above, the provisions of Article 61(E), above, shall be applied. '

 

So what does 61 (E) say?

 

    ' If the referendum rejects the draft permanent constitution, the National Assembly shall be dissolved. Elections for a new National Assembly shall be held no later than 15 December 2005. The new National Assembly and new Iraqi Transitional Government shall then assume office no later than 31 December 2005, and shall continue to operate under this Law, except that the final deadlines for preparing a new draft may be changed to make it possible to draft a permanent constitution within a period not to exceed one year. The new National Assembly shall be entrusted with writing another draft permanent constitution. '

 

The language about changing the final deadline refers to the period after new elections, not before.

 

Thus, according to the existing interim constitution, the plan of extending the deadline at this late date is clearly unconstitutional, and parliament should instead be dissolved and new elections held. (They have to be held no later than December, but could be held, e.g., in September or October in principle).

[Rex Kickass]

It means nothing, they have another week now.

 

And they're going to submit it without questions about Kurdish self-rule and women's rights.

 

Like the EU constitution, they're leaving out the hard bits. Which, like the EU constitution, will bite them in the ass in the long run.