ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Iraq is faced with a systemic crisis and urgently needs reform, Iraq’s Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi said in a televised address broadcast in the early hours of Friday morning, just hours before Iraqis resumed anti-government protests.
“We are faced with a systemic crisis that was not recognized by the political parties or the powers of the state,” Abdul-Mahdi said in his 35-minute address.
“However, the people, through their awareness and consciousness, realized it, which explains the wide popular movement that we see today.”
For years, Iraqis have descended on Baghdad’s Tahrir to demand reforms, an end of corruption, better services, and more job opportunities.
The protests, which usually occur during the summer, resumed on October 1 and spread across the Shiite-majority south.
At least 157 people were killed and 5,494 injured in the wave of unrest, according to a report published by the Human Rights Office of the United Nationals Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) on Tuesday.
The Iraqi government’s own figures were more conservative, putting the civilian death toll at 107 and those injured at 3,458.
The protests resumed again on Friday after a three-week hiatus.
Under pressure to step down, Abdul-Mahdi has promised to make sweeping reforms. However, he has only been able to offer cosmetic changes to date.
“Guaranteeing the highest level of freedoms, the highest level of security and stability, and the highest level of services, job opportunities and economic growth” are now a top priority, Abdul-Mahdi said in his late-night address.
He urged Iraq’s political parties to adhere to the constitution, respect the right to protest and the freedom of the press, and to support the government’s reform program.
“Preserving the sovereignty of countries comes through protecting the rights and freedoms of the people,” the PM said.
Starting from next week, Abdul-Mahdi said he will reshuffle his cabinet to focus on “merit, independence of the ministers, and a greater presence of women and youth”.
He has tasked the Supreme Judicial Council with forming a Central Court to put corrupt officials on trial. The measure is designed to speed up the process and to deliver justice transparently.
The PM also said his government will slash the salaries of high ranking officials in half. The money saved will be spent on a social welfare fund so that “no Iraqi remains under the poverty line”. Families without an income will be given 130,000 IQD (roughly $105) per month, he said.
Abdul-Mahdi also pledged to reform election laws ahead of the 2020 provincial polls to lower the age limit on nominees to encourage young people to run for office.
The measure will support “the role of the youth in leading the society and putting in place a specific mechanism that gives the youth a quota for running in elections, employment, investment, forming parties, and other things”, he said.
Following on from earlier efforts to fully integrate armed factions of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), known in Arabic as Hashd al-Shaabi, into the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), Abdul-Mahdi said armed groups would be dissolved.
Resignation ‘means leaving country to chaos’
Abdul-Mahdi, who took office in October 2018, repeated his earlier claim that all the challenges facing Iraq were inherited from his predecessors and that efforts to press ahead with reforms have been obstructed by parliamentary blocs.
“We say honestly that the call for toppling the government, early elections, and constitutional amendments is a legitimate right,” the PM said, but insisted these should these should take place within established, legal contexts.
“Pressure and giving people the idea that this is possible outside these contexts, then these are adventures for which Iraq has paid the price more than once,” he said.
Although his is known as the man “who has a resignation letter in his pocket” after his past resignations as vice president in 2011 and as minister of oil in 2016, Abdul-Mahdi ruled out resignation at this critical time.
“Some people, with totalitarian mindsets, think my past resignations are a sign of weakness. But whoever refers to those resignation [letters] and reads them, he will find that it was to protest the conditions and an early warning of the dangers piling up that would lead to the events we witness today,” the PM said.
“It is unfortunate that some of those who rejected our calls for reform [then] under the excuse of there being plots today stand at the helm of those calling for the resignation of the government without holding themselves responsible for pushing things to the current level,” he said.
“The resignation of the government, without providing the constitutional alternative, means leaving the country to chaos.”
As a result, the government can’t implement reforms for “employment opportunities, and the achieving of the necessary economic growth to get Iraq out of dependence on oil”.
Abdul-Mahdi also took aim at his predecessor Haider al-Abadi, who is eyeing a second term in office, despite being forced from power following the slaughter of protesters in Basra in summer 2018.
“The armies of millions of the unemployed did not pile up during the months of [my] government, nor did the shortcomings in services, electricity, sewage, health, lack of schools, corruption or the amount of poverty,” the PM said.
“That is why I am saying we are facing a systemic crisis, for which we all need to work to correct, and the scream of the Iraqi people is correct.”
