Key Iraq bloc to boycott parliament

The secular Iraqiya bloc, which won most of the votes of Iraq's disenchanted Sunni Arab minority, walked out of parliament on Saturday sparking a political crisis days after US forces ended their mission. The bloc, led by former premier Iyad Allawi, said it was suspending its participation in parliamentary business in protest at what it charged was Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's monopolisation of all decision-making.
"We can no longer remain silent about the way the state is being administered, as it is plunging the country into the unknown," said the bloc, which holds 82 of the 325 seats in parliament, second only to Maliki's National Alliance. "The Iraqiya bloc is suspending its participation in parliament from Saturday and calling for the opening of a round-table to find a solution that will support democracy and civil institutions," it said.
"Iraqiya rejects this system of policy-making that consists of ignoring other political parties, politicising the justice system, exercising sole power and violating the law." It accused the Maliki government of "placing tanks and armoured cars in front of the homes of Iraqiya leaders in the Green Zone," the heavily fortified central Baghdad district that houses the official residences of leading politicians and government ministers as well as the British and US embassies.
"This sort of behaviour drives people to want to rid themselves of the strong arm of central power as far as the constitution allows them to," it said in allusion to moves by majority Sunni Arab provinces to take up the option of similar autonomy to that enjoyed by the Kurds in northern Iraq. Votes in favour of autonomy by the provincial authorities in Anbar, Salaheddin and Diyala have drawn an angry response from the prime minister.
When Salaheddin provincial council voted in October to push for autonomy, Maliki retorted that it "does not have the right to announce this," citing constitutional procedures that were not followed. The head of the National Alliance's parliamentary bloc, Ibrahim Jaafari, criticised the Iraqiya walkout, and mocked unnamed Sunni parties, which "were hostile to federalism at the time of drafting the constitution and today use it to divide the country into regions."