Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Iraq shifting to Republican form of government
As we prepare for our own change of government, the Iraqis under famed Prime Minister Maliki of Iraq are making their own preparations for their upcoming transitions. In imitation of their erstwhile Republican overlords, one of their steps is the elimination of officials who are tasked with eliminating corruption.
The government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is systematically dismissing Iraqi oversight officials, who were installed to fight corruption in Iraqi ministries by order of the American occupation administration, which had hoped to bring Western standards of accountability to the notoriously opaque and graft-ridden bureaucracy here.So Baghdad is returning to business as usual, it is definitely time to go.
The dismissals, which were confirmed by senior Iraqi and American government officials on Sunday and Monday, have come as estimates of official Iraqi corruption have soared. One Iraqi former chief investigator recently testified before Congress that $13 billion in reconstruction funds from the United States had been lost to fraud, embezzlement, theft and waste by Iraqi government officials.
The moves have not been publicly announced by Mr. Maliki’s government, but word of them has begun to circulate through the layers of Iraqi bureaucracy as Parliament prepares to vote on a long-awaited security agreement.
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