The first minister to quit Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s unity government criticized the prime minister for turning a blind eye to worsening corruption among his loyalists, in an interview with Agence France-Presse.
Former Iraqi communications minister Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi, who resigned on Aug. 27, added that he was holding documents pointing to graft within the government, but declined to give details, insisting instead they would be released at an unspecified future date.
He said he was “100 percent sure that the people surrounding al-Maliki, they are corrupt people, very close to him, they are highly corrupt people.”
“But definitely, he knows the corrupt people, but those who are loyal to him, he never takes any action. He allows them to be more corrupt, and it is very obvious,” Allawi said at his west London home.
The former minister is a Shiite Muslim member of the secular Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc that is part of Maliki’s unity government, but has long been at odds with the prime minister.
He is also a relative of former Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi, one of Maliki’s main rivals.
He said he had told Maliki directly: “Those people who are loyal to you, they are corrupt people, and you never take any action against them.”
The former minister said the level of corruption in Iraq was “huge,” and that rates of commission on contracts were sometimes as high as 70 percent, but declined to point to specific instances of corruption, or which ministries had particularly high rates of graft.
“You know Iraq is at the top of the list of corrupt countries, at the level of Somalia, Myanmar,” Allawi said, adding: “Those countries, they have no revenue, their budget is ... millions of US dollars, while [Iraq’s budget] is for the last year US$100 billion. The real corruption is in Iraq, not in these countries.”
Iraq regularly ranks atop global rankings of the most corrupt countries in the world.
Most recently, it was the ninth-worst country in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, and diplomats and potential investors often point to graft as an impediment to doing business there.
Allawi said that corruption in Iraq was, if anything, getting worse, saying: “The level of corruption, really it is much more worse than the previous days. It is increasing year after year.”
The former minister stepped down last month, accusing Maliki of “political interference,” in particular complaining of attempts to control who could appoint and transfer senior officials.
His resignation was the latest bout in a protracted and wide-ranging political row between Maliki and his opponents, who have accused him of monopolizing power and exhibiting dictatorial tendencies.
Maliki, for his part, says he is being restricted by an unwieldy coalition government.
Allawi’s remarks on graft were part of a wide-ranging criticism of Maliki’s record as prime minister, saying that the prime minister had accomplished nothing since Iraq’s national unity government was formed in December 2010 following nine months of post-election stalemate.
Parliamentary elections are next due in 2014.
Allawi pointed to still-poor electricity provision nationwide, and a lack of improvements in daily life for ordinary Iraqis, particularly in Baghdad, as well as continuing deadly violence across the country.
“The only thing which he has achieved is deepening sectarianism,” Allawi said, saying that Maliki was courting his Shiite Muslim base by pushing for the trial of Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, a Sunni, among other moves.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to