Sun, 31 January 2010Jihad el-Khazen
I shall pick up today where I left off yesterday, in my commentary regarding corruption in Iraq. This corruption is rampant everywhere, starting with the Prime Minister’s office, the ministries - including the Ministry of Health, where medicines are being stolen and sold in the black market, and not ending with the army, the security services, the petroleum sector and elsewhere.
Moving on from what regards the corruption mentioned above and Iraq’s rank at the bottom of the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), along with Afghanistan and Somalia, I will specifically tackle the issue of the salaries received by the members of the Iraqi parliament.
I noticed in Beirut and Amman that there were several of these members present there, and even found more in London upon my return. They did not seem to have been on official leave while present in these cities, and so I asked about this, and heard many complaints about their salaries and allocations. In fact, I needed 20 days to gather the necessary information and cross reference it.
For instance, I specifically remember that the Iraqi parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani once read out loud the names of the representatives, numbered 275 men and women, in order to embarrass them by showing that many of them were absent from the sessions. The Iraqi parliament, in addition to covering up corruption and taking part in it, boasts the world record number of adjourning its sessions on account of a lack of quorum. Even the chairman of the Finance committee opts to be absent while the Parliament is considering the budget, or the members of a committee concerned with petroleum affairs disappear while official negotiations for oil agreements and contracts are underway.
When I brought this to the attention of some of my Iraqi friends who know the intricacies of governance in their country, one of them commented that this is the least of the violations being committed by these parliament members against their country, and that he even prefers their absenteeism over their attendance, because their damage would be far less if they stayed away from decision making circles.
This friend then provided me with numbers and details regarding the remunerations given to the Iraqi representatives in compensation for their work, or lack thereof, which I did not believe in the beginning. I asked other pundits in this vein, and I was given similar numbers and information which, while they may be not precise to the dinar and the cent, are close enough to the real numbers. This is a reality that I find abhorring in a country that is attempting to rebuild itself.
The Iraqi parliament had increased the salaries of it representatives from 23.5 million Iraqi dinars per month to 36 million dinars, or about 30 thousand U.S dollars. Each representative also receives two additional sums annually, each valued at one hundred thousand dollars, bringing the declared income of each representative to a total of 560 thousand dollars per year. If the representative is not re-elected for a second term, then he or she would continue to receive their salary for an additional period of four years, before retiring with a monthly salary of six thousand dollars.
Moreover, the representatives and their families receive diplomatic passports, and retain their diplomatic capacity for another four years, even if they are not re-elected to parliament.
**As we speak, the banks of the Tigris where the water is shallow are being reclaimed to build “villas” for representatives by the riverside, and I believe it likely that this is being done with official funding.
My numbers are not one hundred percent accurate, but they are close enough to the correct figures. In my opinion, the remunerations and allocations received by the Iraqi members of parliament are a flagrant robbery of a country that was destroyed by the occupation, and is now being further ruined by corruption.
True, some of the Iraqi lawmakers are of the highest intellectual calibre, and are entirely dedicated to their country and to the service of its causes. However, there are many others that I would not buy for even a thousand Iraqi dinars, let alone a thousand dollars or Euros. I find them to be stealing, because there is no way that they can provide services to their country that are worth 560 thousand dollars per year.
For the sake of comparison, a member of the House or the Senate in the United States receives 174 thousand dollars per year, added to allocations that still would not place their revenues at even half of those received by Iraqi representatives. When it comes to the majority and minority leaders in both houses, their salary is 193 thousand dollars each, annually. Now this is in the world’s only superpower, and not in a third world country that is attempting to rebuild itself.
For the sake of comparison, also, a representative in Lebanon receives 7100 dollars as monthly salary, and if he or she decides not to run in the elections for a second term, they continue to receive 55 percent of their salaries. If he or she should win in the elections twice, but is defeated while running for a third term, they continue to receive 65 percent of their salary, or 75 percent after three terms.
In Morocco, a representative’s salary is 4200 dollars per month, added to their compensations and their retirement salary of half their active salary for life, while in Egypt, the salary is much less, and is about two thousand dollars per month. Besides, it is linked to the representatives’ attendance of the sessions. Should this latter system be applied in Iraq, the representatives there would die of hunger.
I do not want to burden the reader with many figures and numbers, but I want to say that Iraqi representatives earn more than their French, British or German counterparts.
There used to be a time when patriotic figures were present in the successive Iraqi parliaments, and I remember among them Jamil Madfai, Ali Jawdat al-Ayoubi, Khalil Kenna, Fadel al-Jamali, Saleh Jaber, Abdul-Wahab Mirjan, Abdul Karim al-Azari, Ahmad Mukhtar Baban, and Saeed Qazzaz.
Today, there are...Well, I better not say.
