‘We Should Impeach Maliki,’ Kurdish MPs Say

[Aslan]

SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region – Iraq’s Kurds have been too patient with the Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and it is time to have him impeached, Kurdish MPs said.

“We have to show Maliki our strongest reactions," urged Bakir Hama Siddiq, an MP from the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU).

"Maliki's policies and behavior must be ended. This prime minister has practically proven that he has nothing positive in his agenda," Siddiq said.

"Impeaching Maliki is still on the table and a consensus has formed among the political parties about the dire consequences facing Iraq if his State of Law party continues on its current path," according to Shwan Muhammad Taha, an MP of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Baghdad.

Maliki “has already made all the possible bad and illegal decisions," he added. "The only decision left for him is to make war."

Maliki’s government is built on complex alliances with the Kurds, Arabs and other religious and ethnic groups and parties.

For weeks, the premier’s Shiite Arab government has been locked in a dangerous military stand-off with the Kurds. He ignited the fuse by sending in troops to take over security in the disputed oil-rich province of Kirkuk, and the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) countered by deploying thousands of its own Peshmarga fighters.

More recently, Kurdish anger against Maliki has been joined by protests by the country’s large Sunni minority over alleged discrimination against their provinces.

The anger at Maliki comes as Iraq’s ethnically Kurdish President Jalal Talabani, who also leads the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party, has been recuperating in Germany from a serious stroke he suffered three weeks ago.

Ala Talabani, a leadership council member of the PUK, said that another Kurd should replace the ailing president, because the post belongs to the Kurds.

"This issue has not been discussed yet. But this post belongs to the Kurds," she added.

Meanwhile, a KDP source told Rudaw that the party agrees Talabani’s successor should come from his own PUK.

Sources also said that Iran has told Massoud Barzani, KRG president and head of the KDP, that Tehran would not approve of anyone who did not have his blessing