Word: parliament
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...military presence in the mainly Kurdish southeast remains strong and the only Kurdish party in parliament constantly worries it will be forced to disband. But in other ways, change is happening. After years under a ban, the Kurdish language is flowering, the result of European Union-mandated reforms introduced in 2006. In Silopi, the same store that once secretly sold bootleg Kurdish tapes is now plastered with pictures of budding Kurdish stars. Language courses in the unofficial regional capital Diyarbakir are packed, writers' groups have sprouted and at the local theater, young actors are staging the city's first ever...
...manmade disasters like the March 27 dam collapse can be prevented. "The country is taking the right steps but the speed will depend on changes in the regulatory framework," predicts Adnan Tan, head of sales and trading at CLSA Indonesia. "It is sometimes hard to get things through parliament because of competing interests...
...Sahwa are insurgent spies. A senior source in the Interior Ministry who requested anonymity does not deny the infiltration but puts the figure at closer to 20%. The Interior Ministry source says intelligence agencies are reviewing the Sahwa files. Abdel-Karim Samarraie, the deputy leader of the parliament's defense and security committee and a senior member of the Tawafuk, the largest Sunni bloc, says al-Qaeda moles represent a small minority of Sahwa but should be weeded out. "The Interior Ministry fired 62,000 of its employees because there were legal accusations against them," he says. "The same thing...
Their main apprehension centers on a mandatory registration process. Both foreign and local NGOs must register with a government directorate. Registration in and of itself is not a problem, activists say, but the proposed legislation - which will now go before the Parliament and must be signed into law by the President - is vague about the conditions under which the government can refuse to register NGOs. The draft also envisions a government that can pry more directly into the internal management of NGOs. Baghdad will also have discretionary power to either grant additional privileges or remove an organization's benefits...
Khaled al-Asadi, a member of parliament's committee on civil society organizations, says that although Saddam's dictatorial regime was toppled, some of its habits linger. "Certain groups within government want to put their fingerprints all over the work of NGOs and the law governing them," he says. "They still think in terms of control and surveillance. The Iraqi people were raised on this mind-set. It's not easily or quickly erased...