Weekly Dialogue Summery – 37th Week
The dialogue of this week discussed the nature of the war against corruption, announced by the Prime Minister, and to whether it will include the corrupted ringleaders of authority or will only target those corrupted people of the middle classes. In addition, the dialogue of this week addressed the upcoming US and Saudi role in Iraq, as some see that political blocs will be formed as a wall against the political wings of Popular Mobilization and the forces that support it, aiming at succeeding in the next elections in order to change the authority structure in Baghdad. Also, some interlocutors compared between the international media and the Iraqi ones, diagnosing that the latter suffers a huge shortage in the directive and educational discourse. Lastly, discussions were made about the decline of education quality in Iraq and its clear reflection on the outputs.
Conclusions:
· One of the things that discourages those who fight corruption is the insecurity that prevails in the State offices, creating a sense of futility of taking real steps to fight corruption.
· Iraqi state suffers from unbalance, as it consumes more than it produces, namely, it consumes its current assets, and it is unable to be a successful businessperson, in addition to the considerable backwardness of the infrastructures and the decline of innovative projects.
· There are increasing demands for fighting corruption in Iraq; however, there is no clear mechanism or plan yet to be applied on the ground for this. Also, the first step of fighting corruption was not defined.
· The Iraqi media focuses on the presentation of the political and militarily analysis, despite the weak visions and performance of the analysts in the process of interpreting the events and the issues proposed for discussion.
· One of the serious challenges that Iraq will face during the next five years is the highly increasing rate of illiteracy according to reports of several international organizations.
Recommendations:
· The Iraqi State offices must be restructured before restoring the stolen money to prevent its leakage again in the legalized and non-legalized corruption channels.
· The state must allow the private sector to expand its activity and have a strategic partner in field of economic development in the country, and to develop the internal investor, facilitate the entry of the foreign investor and develop a mechanism to monitor and manage the investment.
· The process of fighting corruption requires developing a scientific study that defines corruption and its roots, determining the government institutions in which corruption is relatively most frequently, reviewing the big corruption issues, and reconsidering the laws related to corruption.
· After defeating terrorism, we need to reform and develop the Iraqi media discourse to be directive and awareness raising, especially in term of abiding by laws and applying the rules.
· All the official and non-official bodies and the civil society organizations must launch a wide campaign to eradicate illiteracy, in addition to the necessity to reactivate the compulsory education, as ignorance leads to many bad consequences in the Iraqi society.
Names of some participating members during the week:
(1) Dr. Issam Al-Saadi
(2) Mr. Amer Al-Musawi
(3) Dr. Sabah Zangana
(4) Deputy Hashem Al-Musawi
(5) Mr. Adel Al-Alawi
(6) Mr. Sami Al-Askari
(7) Mr. Thaer Al-Dulaimi
(8) Lieutenant Mahdi Al-Fakiki
(9) Sheikh Abdulhadi Al-Daraji
(10) Mr. Farooq Al-Ghazali
(11) Deputy Abdulkahar Al-Samarrai
(12) Dr. Azzam Alloush