BETWEEN “TEXT” AND “REALITY”: POSTPONING THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION PUTS THE IRAQI CONSTITUTION TO THE TEST OF TIME LIMITS.
With the postponement of the parliamentary session scheduled to elect the president, the current crisis transcends the bounds of a mere political procedure, opening a deeper debate about the constitution’s place in the Iraqi equation and the extent to which the timeframes it stipulates for the transfer of power are respected.
The constitutional deadline for electing the president has once again become a flexible detail in the bargaining arena between political forces, while the text itself is relegated to the realm of theoretical reference. Considerations of “consensus” and “political restructuring” take precedence over adherence to binding deadlines, in a scenario that reproduces the unwritten norms accumulated during previous parliamentary sessions, norms that allow for the obstruction of entitlements whenever they clash with the calculations of the political blocs.
The Iraqi Constitution, in Article (72/Second/B), stipulates that the President of the Republic must be elected within (30) days of the first session of the new Parliament, to ensure the continuity of legitimacy and prevent a power vacuum.
However, practical experience since 2005 has established a pattern of exceeding these deadlines under the pretexts of “lack of quorum” or “the need for more time to reach an understanding.” This has gradually created a situation resembling a parallel “political custom” and “constitutional custom,” where deadlines are treated as subject to postponement and flexibility as dictated by the balance of power and the deals of the moment. With each new postponement, the impression is reinforced that the “political deal” holds greater authority than the constitutional text, and that deadlines can be suspended as long as an agreement has not yet been finalized behind closed doors.
In this context, legal and political affairs expert Ali Habib warned that violating the constitutional deadlines set for electing the president of the republic “is a clear violation of the provisions of the constitution and directly affects the legitimacy of the entire political process,” warning of “serious legal and political repercussions that may extend to the work of all constitutional authorities.”
Habib told Baghdad Today that “the Iraqi constitution has set clear time limits for completing constitutional entitlements, foremost among them the election of the president of the republic, with the aim of ensuring a smooth transfer of power and preventing a constitutional vacuum. Exceeding these time limits without constitutional justifications is considered a violation of the principle of the supremacy of the constitution and a weakening of the prestige of the constitutional text.”
He explained that “the legal implications of this violation are represented in the possibility of challenging the legitimacy of subsequent procedures, especially those related to the appointment of the Prime Minister and the formation of the government. The continuation of this violation places the Supreme Federal Court in front of a sensitive interpretive responsibility, and may open the door to accumulated constitutional crises that will be difficult to contain later.”
On the political level, the expert in legal and political affairs warned that “obstructing the election of the President of the Republic perpetuates the state of political deadlock and deepens the loss of confidence among political forces, in addition to its negative impact on internal stability and the image of the political process in front of local and international public opinion, and the continuation of constitutional violations reinforces the logic of political norms at the expense of legal texts.”
While calls are increasing to respect constitutional deadlines and not turn them into mere “flexible recommendations” subject to the fluctuations of understandings, observers believe that the accumulation of these violations turns the crisis of electing the president of the republic into a repeated model of a broader crisis between “text” and “reality,” where the supremacy of the constitution recedes in the face of customs formed from precedents of postponement and temporary settlements, with the accompanying risks to the stability of the political system and the public’s confidence in the legitimacy of its institutions.