Or something. Swopa has Salam Pax’s constitution-blogging:
swopa: Team Shiite opts for a short punt
Salam Pax: So nothing really. They just wanted to make sure the current Assembly is not dissolved. al-Hassani is having a press conference and he is talking about four outstanding issues. One of them is the issue of regions. [sic]
al-hassani is saying this is not to be called an extension because we do have a draft what’s going to be done are amendments only.
And it looks like the preamble has not been agreed upon yet!
"we had two choices either take an unfinished draft or apply for a new extension. We chose the unfinished draft".
OK, so now you know as much as most Iraqis know about what happened.
UPDATE:
Salam’s dad is back from the Assembly:
“everybody’s got a bloody nose”. That’s what he is telling me.
There are still two issues which are still open. The formation of regions is still very much debated. The Shia want this to be an issue decided within the region itself i.e. if Basra wants to become an autonomous region this is decided in Basra only the central federal government has no say. The other parties want this to be a national decision.The other big issue is de-Baathification. The Shia parties want this tobe mentioned in the constitution. Allawi and the Sunnis don’t want this to be mentioned there.
I did see the draft, I wasn’t allowed to touch it tho :-) It looks like a hastily written document, not even good hand writing. It is hand written and with lots of things crossed out. Each page is signed by a memeber of the Shia coalition and a member of the Kurdish coalition.
There’s more….