Tuesday, March 1st 2011 Baghdad Council suspends its operations all day
Baghdad, The Chairman of the Relations and Information committee in Baghdad province decided Tuesday to suspend the work of all its offices and its members and make tours in the streets of the capital, in order to consider the demands of citizens after the Friday protests.
Hassan Falhi told AKnews that the decision came as a result of the large errors that occurred in the municipal councils represented by the poor services noting that urgent amounts were spent for direct service reforms in Baghdad.
"The Iraqi citizen has the right to demand of his missing rights, and the Iraqis are disappointed by the degradation of services provided to them. "
"The budget problems of the provinces and some of the laws revealed that the demonstrations were necessary and essential to correct the action of the provincial councils.
"Law 21, which defines the work of the provincial councils hinder the work of the local authority due to the intersection with many of the powers of the government. There is intersection between the local government and the Municipality of Baghdad due to the fact that the latter consider itself part of the federal government and the local authorities in Baghdad cannot intervene in its job."
The Law 21 was approved to hold the elections of provincial elections that are not organized within a region in 2008 and the elections were held on March of 2009 in 14 provinces except Kirkuk, which was considered to be in exclusive mode and the provinces of the Kurdistan region, while no elections had been done in the districts, counties and municipalities since 2003 and so far.
The Iraqi provinces are witnessing demonstartions and protests since the fifth of February that called for the provision of basic services and jobs, fighting corruption, provision of ration card items, dismissing some governers and provincial council, and increasing the hours of electric power supply.
http://www.aknews.com/en/aknews/3/222026/
