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| (Iraqi Parliament) |
At the end of January 2019 Prime Minister Adil Abdul Mahdi announced his new anti-graft campaign. That focused around a new Supreme Anti-Corruption Council. Every Iraqi administration since 2005 has said that it would stand up to theft and stealing, but they have done little to actually combat it. Mahdi’s effort is likely to go the same way.
PM Mahdi signed an order to
initiate the new Anti-Corruption Council. It is to speed up the legal process
to fight corruption, invite the parliament and cabinet to discuss anti-graft
measures, make officials disclose their finances, get the ministries and
commissions to develop plans to monitor their programs and policies, make sure
the government complies with the Integrity Commission and the Board of Supreme
Audit and get those two bodies to cooperate, speed up work on the National
Index of Integrity, create a national anti-corruption strategy, set
up offices in each province to coordinate anti-theft agencies, and other
duties. Iraq currently has three anti-corruption groups: the Integrity
Commission, the Board of Supreme Audit and inspector generals in the
ministries. It appears that the new Council will try to coordinate these
different organizations, while trying to get the rest of the government to
comply. The problem is almost all of these initiatives have been voiced by
previous administrations with little to show for it.
The previous government of PM Haidar Abadi also said it was
fighting corruption, but took little substantive action. The former
head of the Integrity Commission Hassan al-Yasiri for example said that he
led 48 investigations into the ministry under Abadi and none were accepted by
the courts for lack of evidence. He believed the legal system was part of the
problem because it was corrupt. The Commission submitted 20 bills to parliament
and the cabinet to amend old laws and regulations to combat corruption, and
submitted a plan to fight graft in 2017, but none of them went anywhere. He
pointed to the lack of political will as the cause of the lack of progress. As
a result, he resigned in 2018. The current head of the Commission Izzat Tawfiq
Jaafar said things were no better. He told the media that his office was
working in an insecure environment because of the political pressure on it to
stop its work. Other former Commission leaders have voiced similar difficulties
in doing their job and how deep corruption runs in the Iraqi government. It’s
for these reasons that many see Mahdi’s new Council as just the latest lip
service to fighting this problem, which will probably have just as much success
as all the other attempts.
SOURCES
Abu Zeed, Adnan,
“Iraq activates Supreme Anti-Corruption Council,” Al Monitor, 1/28/19
Al Maalomah, “Prime
Minister clarifies order to form the Supreme Council for Combating Corruption,”
1/29/19
Al Mada, “Hassan
Yasiri: We achieved 48 corruption charges against ministries…The judiciary was
not convinced by the evidence,” 9/15/18
1 comment:
We democrats interested in the country of Irak should remember the slowness of changes .The encyclopedists and the philosophers wrote definite texts about the equal rights of women or minorities or poor .But after them, came an emperor and two monarchs.A century after the French revolution was the 3rd repubic established firmly.Then what can we do? write letters to Mr Hassan (who has given up ) and ask him to continue with courage his fight against corruption and encourage our government (Canada) to be supportive and to avoid sanctions Geneviève Delmas Patterson , retired professor physical Chemistry Uqam
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