First Anniversary Of The Democratically Elected Council Of Iraq
BAGHDAD - One year ago today, the 275 members of Iraq’s Council of Representatives were sworn in as the first democratically-elected legislative body in Iraq’s long and storied history.
The CoR’s first year representing Iraqis has been a turbulent one. The Samarra mosque bombing of February 2006 intensified a wave of sectarian violence whose divisions naturally spilled over into Iraq’s political realm. Just last month, the difficulty of Iraq’s current environment was brought home by Al Qaeda’s barbaric attack on the CoR itself.
Yet that attack did not deter this body from continuing its duties. In the past 12 months Iraq’s elected lawmakers have come together to pass a number of important pieces of legislation. The Fuel Import Liberalization Law and the Foreign Investment Law, passed last fall, have enabled important economic progress. February’s 2007 Budget Law promises to improve Iraq’s budget execution. And the Independent High Electoral Commission law, passed less than two weeks ago, sets out election procedures to ensure that the voices of Iraqis, which spoke so loudly in the national elections of December 2005, will continue to be heard.The Council’s most important work lies ahead of it. Iraqi and Coalition security forces have sacrificed greatly to realize measured but significant progress in providing security to Iraq’s citizens – that commitment must be matched by Iraq’s lawmakers to find difficult political agreement on such fundamental issues as the Hydrocarbon Law, de-Ba’athification reform, Constitutional Review and the setting of a process and a date for new Provincial Elections that will increase Sunni participation in local government.
The virtue of a representative government is not found necessarily in its decisiveness, but in its deliberation. Yet the members of the CoR, who represent all Iraqis, must share the urgency of all Iraqis to find common political ground in the face of even the greatest adversity. We at Multi-National Force-Iraq applaud their continuing efforts to do so, and congratulate this pillar of Iraq’s young government on the anniversary it has reached today.
As imperfect as they are, they are still the first democratically-elected legislative body in Iraq's history. There is growing pains for people that actually have a say in their country after years of tyranny. These people also face the possibility of death everyday.
