Assembly Members Struggling to Fit the Bill

On a recent morning, one day after 35 Iraqis were killed in insurgent attacks, the country’s first democratically elected parliament in generations spent the morning debating rumors of toxic levels of iron in shipments of Australian wheat.

Then it devoted the afternoon to proposals for building a shrine to the victims of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

More than three months after taking their seats, members of the transitional National Assembly find themselves neck-deep in the mundane details of modern government. Lawmakers meet three days a week, and sessions, broadcast live on state TV, are often as compelling as C-Span on an off-day, although the overall feeling of chaos waiting to erupt adds a touch of unpredictability.

Many voters, who risked their lives to cast ballots in January, believe that the lawmakers are preoccupied with their “chairs” -- a local term for power and perks.

“They do not care about the people who voted for them,” said Abdel Karim Dawood, 43, an oil facility guard from the northern city of Mosul. “Regrettably, I would say that I have followed two or three sessions on TV, and I was hoping that they would do something for the people, but then I was disappointed and stopped following their news.”

Assembly members say that the very act of coming together in a democratic setting to discuss wheat contamination or any other topic is a necessary step toward a new Iraq. Details such as security arrangements, bodyguards and safe housing, they say, are legitimate issues in an environment where two assembly members have already been assassinated. But they acknowledge that Iraqis’ impatience is understandable.

“We don’t have a magic pen which we can just sign something and make everything better,” said Alaa Talabani, a female Kurdish lawmaker. “I can’t just come here and say, ‘This is the new security plan.’ ... We know we are doing a good job. But we want to do better.”

And the real legacy of the assembly may lie in the informal contacts, backstage chats and unlikely personal bonds forming when the cameras are off. Shiite Muslims, Kurds and a smattering of Sunni Arabs, many of whom actively distrust each other, are being forced to come together and openly discuss what kind of Iraq they want.

The end result comes across like a high school debate society, with members shouting each other down, taking discussions in unpredictable directions and, in some cases, struggling to grasp parliamentary procedure or what constitutes a valid point of order.

One legislator recently suggested a penalty for members raising frivolous and incorrect points of order. The proposal that violators lose the right to speak for the rest of the session was defeated, but the concept evoked images of a hockey-style penalty box installed in the assembly chambers.

A Western diplomat who observes the assembly said the lawmakers were “understandably flush with the excitement of being able to stand up and shout their opinion.” Speaking on condition of anonymity, the diplomat added, “There’s a few people that get worked up and they want to yell their point and don’t want to wait. And there’s a few people who frankly haven’t absorbed” the concept of debate.

That excitement took center stage early on, when it came time to form committees. The members went on what could be called a binge, ending up with more committees than there are actual lawmakers to serve on them.

When one assembly member proposed a committee on compensation for victims of Hussein’s regime, a second quickly countered with a suggestion for a committee on victims of the U.S. occupation. The two committees have since been merged.

The thankless job of riding herd on the group falls to the unlikely pair of Speaker Hachim Hassani and his main deputy, Hussein Shahristani. Hassani, a genial, burly Sunni Arab, and Shahristani, a trim, dapper Shiite nuclear scientist who resembles actor Richard Dreyfuss, spend their days patiently trying to keep debates on track and generally conducting a virtual Civics 101 seminar.

“Sometimes it’s very difficult for people to realize what we have accomplished in the last months. We didn’t have a parliamentary system here,” Hassani said. “Most of the people never had the experience to be deputy of the parliament and things like that. We are all learning in this process.”

Despite the growing pains, the first few months of the assembly have produced scenes of great poignancy.

One day, after a deadly insurgent bombing in the Kurdish north, lawmaker Khosrow Jaff stood up to address the assembly. A well-known Kurdish poet, easily recognizable with his shoulder-length white hair and waxed mustache, Jaff read a poem on the assembly floor commemorating the victims.

Another time, a Western observer saw an Iraqi man who had been injured in a car bombing, his leg in a cast, come to the heavily guarded Baghdad Convention Center to make a personal appeal for help to Deputy Speaker Shahristani. The man, who never found Shahristani, instead happened upon two assembly members from a Kurdish Islamic party. After hearing his tale, they gave him all the cash in their pockets.

Ultimately, the National Assembly is just the latest in a series of transitional government entities, intended to dissolve once a permanent constitution is written and approved and new elections are held -- ideally by the end of this year. In the meantime, a new Iraqi political class is forming -- one whose ranks extend far beyond the tight circle of U.S.-approved politicians who have dominated the country for the last two years.

In between sessions and committee meetings, assembly members gather and mingle in a partitioned section of the convention center. The scene looks like a poster for a united Iraq: robed tribal elders; turbaned sheiks; secularists in tailored suits; women in clothes ranging from black robes to pantsuits with high heels.

“Sometimes it’s easier to talk about some things out here than in [the chamber],” said Abdel Karim Mohammedawi, a legendary Shiite guerrilla leader-turned-lawmaker.

One recent afternoon, as others lined up for the lunch buffet, Speaker Hassani and assembly member Mishaan Jaburi, an unapologetic supporter of Hussein’s Baath Party, huddled together in discussion. Though both are Sunni Arabs, they are a study in contrasts: Hassani, a pro-invasion gradualist; Jaburi, a dogged opponent of the U.S. presence who thinks insurgents guilty of attacking American soldiers should be pardoned.

They were soon joined by Shahristani, and the trio of sometimes bitter rivals spent a few minutes chatting amiably.

Two days later, Jaburi rose to complain that hundreds of innocent Sunnis had been detained in the ongoing Operation Lightning crackdown in Baghdad. Live, on national TV, Shahristani ordered his microphone cut off.

Times staff writer Borzou Daragahi in Baghdad and special correspondent Roaa Ahmed in Mosul contributed to this report.