Iraqis have preserved their well-known sense of humor despite decades of humorless fascism but when one sees the actual prime minister [Nuri Kamal al-Maliki], one’s first impression is that he’s no good at telling jokes. You might say that being able to make people laugh is not the first prerequisite for a politician, let alone a prime minister, who, at least in Iraq , should first of all be able to free the cities from the humorless militias that once belonged to the parties in his own coalition. We, the independent media, try to do our best to make our readers laugh, because “When nothing is serious, nothing is funny” (Oscar Wilde). The world is full of deliciously funny stories that really happened, like that thief who was immediately caught because he lost his wallet in the apartment he had robbed, or U.S. presidential candidate John McCain’s comment last month on the increase of U.S. cigarette exports to Teheran: “I think they’re trying to kill the Iranians”. Now, as you will have noticed, our newspaper contains – or, at present, contained – a lot of advertisements for tenders for government contracts. We depend on this advertising to bring you the serious and mad side of life.

Today, the Ministry of Health is purchasing two million bandages, tomorrow the Ministry of Defense will buy two million bullets. So, these ads, apart from showing some contradictions in government policies, are a unique – and actually the sole – source of information on how the Iraqi cabinet invests the billions in oil revenue. This is crucial for the Iraqi parliament, because it doesn’t receive its mandated annual financial report, through which it can check how the ministers have spent the nation’s money. Never mind that publishing the same contract solicitation notice nine times might not reduce corruption in Baghdad ! But at least even the laziest newspaper-reading member of parliament gets an ample chance to study the spending of those at the top he is supposed to control.

But these times are no more. Al-Maliki has decided to cut government advertising, ordering that a contract tender notice can be published only once. This policy has been effective now for a few weeks. Our reporters in the Iraqi Assembly tell us that a general panic has broken out and that some members of parliament are thinking of resigning. Others are thinking of suicide while the youngest ones want to start an armed struggle. The female members went on strike and refuse to bring Maliki his favorite alcohol-free beer while Speaker Mahmud al-Mashhadani announced he might convert to Buddhism, just to throw the whole sectarian government system into chaos. The independent newspapers in the meantime are awaiting their certain death in a dignified way.

They continue printing, as if nothing happened, seeing the noose of the gallows dangling in the last summer sand storm on which they will be able to report. Only the officials who bring the texts of the tender advertisements and who receive a commission of twenty to forty percent have ordered the builders of their third villas to stop work and now want to escape the country. Cowards! They claim Al-Maliki hates them, nobody else. If we remember well, the little law on the publication of tenders was written by Paul Bremer, the devout Christian governor who believed human beings are born evil, especially Iraqis. We never managed to find the text of the law. Of course, as long as the tender advertisements kept coming, we couldn’t care less whether it was a law or an irretrievable memo now buried among Bremer’s keepsakes from Baghdad in his home in the States. With this law or memo Bremer unknowingly helped to create a free press in Iraq and a vigorous parliament. In May next year we will mourn his departure in 2004; of course only for this reason.

Close window | Back to the homepage