In Iraq, under its quota-based democratic system and across several electoral cycles since 2005, we have grown accustomed to a departure from the democratic norm — that being the principle whereby the party or coalition that wins an election leads the country. The current government of Ali al-Zeidi is no exception to this pattern.
Since the 2010 elections, no one has come to the prime ministership on the strength of their own candidacy — beginning with al-Maliki, then al-Abadi, then Abd al-Mahdi, then al-Kadhimi, and most recently al-Sudani, and now al-Zeidi, who did not participate in the elections, has no political party, and has no parliamentary bloc in parliament to cover his back should he face accountability proceedings, as is the case in democratic systems.
Al-Zeidi does not come from the Iraqi political establishment that the public knows, and which the media has helped define, as one of the most prominent economic figures of the post-2003 era.
Yet it would be naive to imagine that he has no clear picture of the tragic reality besetting the country, particularly its economic reality. The scale of his financial investments across various branches of that economy — perhaps most notably the food ration card system — makes him one of the most knowledgeable about its condition, its fragility, and the extent to which its failures could deepen.
He has not been far from Iraq's political reality throughout the years in which his many companies and their billions in capital exercised influence over it, and were during that time exposed to various forms of bargaining and extortion. Such companies cannot conduct their business without daily monitoring of political developments.
Al-Zeidi enjoys, unlike his predecessors in the prime ministership, unprecedented domestic, regional, and international support. He is the only one to have received a phone call from the US president — lasting 10 minutes — in which the president asked him: "How can I help you?" This is, in truth, a clear signal, amid the complex political challenges of the region and the atmosphere of anticipation pervading the Arab world, that much of what is coming will differ from what we have been accustomed to. Perhaps the least one can hope for is that things remain as they are, rather than deteriorating further.
Al-Zeidi is approaching dangerous and sensitive files that his predecessors barely touched at the margins, because these files implicate the very symbols of the political process — figures who, despite deep political differences and widely diverging agendas, have allied to preserve the boundaries that safeguard their political interests.
It is difficult to judge the extent of al-Zeidi's ability to confront the grand corruption file, which is tied to the pillars of the political process itself and not merely to corrupt individuals. The sovereignty file in Iraq is bound up with the historically complex mechanisms of political operation across the Middle East.
In the context of the exceptional developments in the region, and particularly what is unfolding in Iraq, there is a major question that cannot be sidestepped: can al-Zeidi's government meet its obligations?
It is not possible to ignore the risks facing al-Zeidi's government from the moment of its first birth announcements. Despite having won the confidence of parliament, it is struggling to complete its formation — 9 ministries have yet to have their ministers appointed, owing to internal disputes within the coordinating framework that produced it, the full scale of which is difficult to assess. This is in addition to the fact that the government has opened 2 of the most dangerous files that its predecessors either avoided or approached with considerable hesitation: the corruption file and the armed factions file.
On the other hand, however, there is some cause for optimism. The circumstances that have shifted the regional balance of power in recent months, and diminished Tehran's role within it, cannot be ignored.