2023-09-25 16:39:28
September 25, 2023
Baghdad / Obelisk Event:
Ibrahim Al-Abadi
Iraqi parties are suffering from aging, increasing atrophy in their political role, and a decline in their ability to maintain the image of an effective party with the ability to attract new generations to its ranks. These parties are struggling to remain in the arena of political action, relying on a long past and history of party activity, and the loyalty of individuals from a generation or generations. As a precedent, history alone is no longer sufficient to support the poor image of these parties, which means the need to search for deep reasons for the crisis of political parties in Iraq in an extremely turbulent environment and to move from one type to another. The Iraqi parties, specifically the Iraqi Communist Party, the Islamic Call, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and the Islamic Party, which are parties with well-established political and party organizational structures, face the challenge of maintaining their internal cohesion and popular appeal after a series of internal tremors, retreats, and divisions resulting from changing work priorities. And its ethics and the requirements of the new phase, the phase of state building, the change in political discourse, the forced modification that entered the revolutionary ideology, and the arrival of new national priorities. These parties were not prepared intellectually, politically, organizationally, and popularly for the shock of assuming power and participating in it all at once. The transition from the opposition to power, and from the ethics of struggle And its struggle for the prosperity and gains of political participation, and from party unity, internal solidarity and party discipline to the temptations of leadership and the multiplicity of visions and ambitions for power, introduced major changes in the behavior of these parties and made them face an internal challenge, external competition and competition for the space of power and influence with the emergence of new political players, activists, activists and embryonic movements that are growing. Within the parties themselves.
One of the most prominent defects of these parties was their inability to keep up due to the stagnation of thought, the rigidity of visions, the aging of the leadership, and the miserable failure to attract the new generation and understand its priorities.
These parties have shown an inability to renew their discourse and harmonize their principles, ideas, and ideology with the requirements of the new reality. The dominance and rigidity of the ideological side was a reason for the decline of the aura of these parties and the disappearance of their luster in their field of work. The current Iraqi generation is no longer attracted to the idea of the Islamic State due to the decline of the idea and model, and nothing remains. The nationalist parties have those who support them in the idea of the nation-state or national unity, although this idea still caresses the dreams of the Kurds, for example, but it has declined in the Arab world, and the Qatari national state and its sovereignty, prosperity, and interests have become the priority, and with the decline of leftist and socialist thought in general throughout the world, Marxist and communist organizations no longer tempt anyone but the pioneers. And following the old dream of continuing the journey, and with the decline of ideology and its approaching death, there is another alternative ideological salvation solution of the type of resistance and smart resistance based on the idea of mobilizing the youth with the weapon of rejection and not with the weapon of building the hoped-for state. This strategy attracted enthusiastic people searching for a space for political action in the face of long-established historical parties. The paths and causes of the division were multiplied by the multiplicity of arguments, sponsors and supporters in a heated and permeated arena that echoed the projects of others in the absence of an integrated national project.
Iraqi party life revealed a historical failure to respond to the call for internal development, preparation for generational succession, and harmony with popular priorities, organization, and leadership, while a historical and inherited personality was devoted to intellectual or political projects, and a dangerous sanctification was rooted based on revolving around the centrality of the individual and his charisma, and energies were employed for the sake of this individual’s project and not the party’s project. The modern process that keeps pace with the process of building a modern state.
In general, the structures of the Iraqi parties did not develop, they did not grow intellectually, there was no modernization in the discourse, their programs and organizational structures were not reviewed, and they continued to revolve within the framework of the current pre-modern state mentality and the dreams of a utopian ideological state. Moreover, the parties became private properties owned by leaders and heirs, and served by money earned from sharing power and wealth. Then it is reinvested according to a traditional pattern of clientelism based on servanthood. While these parties established a model of political division and a sustainable crisis due to conflicts of interests, they replaced that with consensus according to the transactional method of managing power, which made the concept of political coalitions retreat in favor of the concept of a political deal, and the fate of the country depended on the ability to produce a deal. A political situation in which external forces intervene and are removed with great difficulty. This was an additional reason for the decline in confidence in the parties and the widening of the gap between their perceptions and the public’s perceptions.
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