Maliki ueber alles?

While we’ve all been preoccupied with Tunisia then Egypt, an Iraqi Supreme Court decision has called into question the independence of the central bank, the electoral commission, the human rights commission and the integrity commission.  Reidar Visser has commented on the electoral commission aspect, but arguably the central bank is even more important.  The big issue is accumulation of power in the hands of the Prime Minister.

Here are the most obviously relevant articles of the Iraqi constitution:

Article 102:

The High Commission for Human Rights, the Independent Electoral Commission, and the Commission on Public Integrity are considered independent commissions subject to monitoring by the Council of Representatives, and their functions shall be regulated by law.

Article 103:

First: The Central Bank of Iraq, the Board of Supreme Audit, the Communication and Media Commission, and the Endowment Commissions are financially and administratively independent institutions, and the work of each of these institutions shall be regulated by law.

Second: The Central Bank of Iraq is responsible before the Council of Representatives. The Board of Supreme Audit and the Communication and Media Commission shall be attached to the Council of Representatives.

What the court apparently decided is that agencies with an “executive” function have to be subordinated to the executive branch, not the Council of Representatives, in order to respect the separation of powers.  This is obviously pretty deep legal water in which I don’t know how to swim, so I am reluctant to dive in.

But it also raises important questions about the survivability of democracy in Iraq, where accumulation of power has a long and unhappy history. Independent agencies are a frequent feature of the landscape in democratic societies, and independent central banks are regarded as absolutely vital to macroeconomic stability, which Iraq has enjoyed for the most part since the fall of Saddam Hussein.  If executive branch supervision refers exclusively to financial probity and other administrative questions, that is one thing (though perhaps not entirely without problems).  If executive branch decision is going to mean that these institutions are no longer in any serious sense independent, that is another.

We shouldn’t leap to conclusions, but I certainly hope the U.S. embassy in Baghdad is inquiring and letting the Prime Minister know that those who fought and paid for Iraq’s relative freedom would not be interested in seeing it undermined by an overly aggressive effort to centralize power.