Demonstrations over Fuel Price Increases in Iraq

Demonstrations over Fuel Price Increases in Iraq

Al-Zaman: Now that the elections are safely over, the government of Ibrahim Jaafari has tripled the price of gasoline and made substantial increases in the price of gas and heating oil, in contravention of its campaign promises. Hundreds of demonstrators came out in Kut and Karbala to protest the increases, which hit the poor especially hard in the winter. Many Iraqis consider the subsidized prices a way of sharing in the country's oil wealth, which may generate as much as $50 billion this year, and which goes directly into government coffers. The cheap fuel also does, however, allow a lot of smuggling and it is expensive for the state, and Jaafari's move seems designed to ensure that no government has to take responsibility for it. He is a lame duck prime minister and a new government will be formed in the coming months. This move may also be a sign that Jaafari will not continue as prime minister. It is the sort of policy that would have been pushed by the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq's Adil Abdul Mahdi, a former Marxist who has become a free marketeer, and who is a leading candidate for prime minister.

Al-Zaman estimates that the Kurdistan Alliance will have about 50 seats in the new parliament. This is down from the 75 they had gained on Jan. 30, when the Sunni Arabs had not voted.

A Turkish source reports that, as well, 6 of the 9 seats allotted from Kirkuk province will go to the Kurdistan Alliance. This result has provoked consternation among Turkmen and Arabs, who also live in Kirkuk province in great numbers and fear that they will be joined against their will to the Kurdistan region confederacy.

Guerrillas detonated roadside bombs and conducted assassinations all over Iraq late Saturday and through Sunday, leaving two dozen dead. A GI was killed at Fallujah. One of the suicide bombers killed a woman and injured 11 persons at the Shiite shrine neighborhood of Kadhimiyah in northeast Baghdad, in a further attempt to stir sectarian passions. Many of the targets in this spree of violence were the Iraqi police and military.

There are a lot of credible complaints coming in about fraud in the recent Iraqi elections. A lot of the complaints concern the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shiite fundamentalist list, which had won the Jan. 30 elections in many provinces and was therefore able to erect a Chicago-style party machine. As in the old days in Chicago, the election was so democratic that even some of the dead got to vote.

"US Firm Paid $20 million for Iraq Propaganda". The headline says it all.