Iraq speaker calls on Abadi to sack corrupt ministers

BAGHDAD: Iraq’s Parliament speaker called on Monday for Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi to sack ministers found to be negligent or corrupt as part of a wide-ranging reform drive.
Abadi on Sunday proposed a series of measures aimed at curbing corruption, streamlining the government and improving services after weeks of protests and a call from Iraq’s top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani for drastic change. Parliament speaker Salim Al-Juburi urged MPs to approve Abadi’s measures and said even more reforms were required. The legislature is to discuss the reforms on Tuesday. “We asked the prime minister to dismiss a number of ministers who are clearly guilty of dereliction, negligence and corruption,” Juburi said in televised remarks.
Juburi did not name specific ministers in his public statement.
But a parliamentary official said those responsible for electricity and water resources were both proposed for the chopping block in a meeting Monday between the speaker and political leaders. Juburi also called for MPs who are absent for more than a third of the time to be removed. Absent MPs are a perennial problem for the Iraqi legislature, which even failed to reach a quorum for an emergency session called in response to a sweeping offensive by Daesh group in June 2014.
Thousands of people have turned out in Baghdad and various cities in the south to vent their anger at the authorities.