To piggyback on seesdifferent's very important and underread diary, Ayad Allawi hires GOP lobbyists to aid coup in Iraq, it appears more crap is now hitting the fan totally unnoticed by the traditional media.
Allawi's bloc quits Maliki government
Baghdad, Aug 24, (VOI) – Former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's Iraqi National List (INL) withdrew "finally" from Nouri al-Maliki's government, a leading INL member announced on Friday.
"The INL will officially notify the head of government of its decision soon," Iyad Jamal al-Din told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) by telephone, adding that the decision was taken "after the government insisted on ignoring the demands made in February 2007." The INL, which has five portfolios in the government of Iraqi Premier Nouri al-Maliki, announced on August 7, 2007 that it would suspend its participation in the government, and threatened to "withdraw entirely from the government if its demands continued to be ignored."
The INL, which had 25 out of the total 275 seats in the Iraqi parliament, forwarded 14 demands to the government, including reconsidering the law on terrorism, filtering the army and police of "disloyal elements" and suspending the debaathification law pending an enactment of a new law. The INL portfolios included justice, communications, science and technology, human rights and a minister of state.
"The minister of science and technology, who belongs to the Communist Party, one of the parties inside the INL, has declined to quit the government, while the others agreed," Jamal al-Din said.
How many people can leave the government before it stops being a government? (That's a serious question, btw.)