Baghdad- The media and social networking sites were abuzz with Iraq In what were described as “secret procedures” that took place inside Parliament during the session of August 7, regarding adding “privileges and raising the salaries of members of the House of Representatives.”
Activists circulated a document indicating a parliamentary decision to equalize the salaries of its members with those of ministers, which many considered a circumvention and a blow to all the efforts of the demonstrators and their demands to reduce the salaries of senior employees.
This comes despite the Federal Court’s decision issued in 2018, which included reducing the salaries of members of parliament in implementation of the decision to reduce the salaries of senior government positions.
According to the instructions, the average salaries of members of parliament were reduced from 8 million and 200 thousand dinars to about 6 million dinars after adopting the certificate and years of service as new criteria for determining additional allowances to the salary.
conflicting accounts
In turn, Member of Parliament Nour Nafie Al-Jalhawi, in a post on her personal Facebook page, rushed to deny her knowledge of what had happened, as she indicated in an audio clip that she had boycotted the session.
She stressed that “the document that is being circulated so far has not been officially confirmed to us. Is it correct? Is it related to the deduction? Or the increase?” She said, “We will definitely work with a number of members of the House of Representatives to stop this if it is proven to us.”
For his part, Iraqi MP Mustafa Sand revealed, in a video clip circulated on social media pages, the reasons that led to the inclusion of this decision in the parliament session on August 7, presenting a different story that talks about a sudden reduction in MPs’ salaries, which led some of them to demand that they be returned to what they were.
The parliamentary bloc “Ishraqat Kanun” – which emerged from the Tishreen demonstrations – announced in a statement that “it and a group of council members did not vote to approve those instructions and objected to those procedures, and requested the documents from the council presidency to review their content, but the council presidency refused to do so.”
Internal organization
In turn, the head of the organizing committee of the popular movement in Iraq, Hussein Ali Al-Karawi, said during his interview with Al Jazeera Net, “All those who reached the parliament dome claimed to serve the people, but they were far from that. They were looking for power, the seat, and money without realizing the seriousness of this position.”
Al-Karawi warned against “Parliament proceeding with increasing its financial allocations and the negative impact of this on the relationship between the citizen and the political forces in the upcoming elections, which increases the gap and lack of trust between the two parties,” calling on Parliament to “leave this issue once and for all.”
For his part, Member of Parliament Kamel Al-Akeili denied that the House of Representatives voted on an increase in the salaries of representatives, explaining that “what happened was the organization of the internal regulations of Parliament and voting on it as a law in implementation of the decision of the Federal Court.”
Al-Akeili explained in his interview with Al Jazeera Net that “what happened in the parliament session on August 7 was not an increase in the salaries of the representatives,” saying that “there was a parliamentary decision that was voted on during the time of the government.” Haider al-Abadi By reducing the salaries of senior positions and presidencies, but in the previous session, the Speaker of Parliament at the time requested that approximately 48 directors be exempted from these instructions.
He added that “MP Basem Khashan filed a lawsuit with the court to challenge this exception, and the court issued its decision invalidating what the former parliament speaker had said about the exception, obligating parliament to amend its internal regulations and organize them by law.”
He stressed that “Parliament went to amend its internal regulations in accordance with the court’s view of the necessity of having a law and instructions, which is what happened specifically during the session, and did not include any increase in allocations or salaries.”
The Federal Court’s decision in 2018 approved reducing the salaries of the House of Representatives by varying percentages, as the salaries of holders of lower degrees were reduced more, while the salaries of holders of higher degrees (master’s and doctorate) remained unchanged.
Old new issue
The controversy over the salaries of members of the House of Representatives is not new. Former MP Mishaan al-Jubouri said in 2018 during a television interview that a member of parliament receives a monthly salary of up to 45 million Iraqi dinars, equivalent to about $37,000, compared to about $200 received by the smallest employee in Iraq.
At the time, the parliament denied that the MP received a salary of up to 45 million dinars per month. The media department of the Iraqi Council of Representatives explained in a statement that the MP’s salary was around 12 million and 900 thousand dinars before the reform package was launched, while the MP’s total salary after applying the reduction according to Resolution (333) reached 10 million at its highest rate.
In 2020, specialists on social media talked about other numbers; they indicated that the salary of the Speaker of the House of Representatives and his deputies is 35 million dinars, with 20 million dinars per month in allowances and allocations, meaning that it reaches 55 million dinars, while the salary of a member of the House of Representatives was 15 million and 10 million in allowances and hospitality, bringing the total to 25 million dinars.
The Iraqi Council of Representatives had previously voted for the first time by majority in 2011 on a law to reduce the salaries of the three presidencies (the Republic, the ministers, and the Council of Representatives) in addition to the salaries of parliament members. The parliament confirmed that the vote came in response to the will of the Iraqi people and religious authorities after popular demonstrations that coincided with similar demonstrations in what was known at the time as the Arab Spring.
