To Build a Civil State .. A State of Citizenship and Social Justice
(Electoral List No.156)
The “Saeroun” [i.e. Marching Forward] electoral alliance, which is a national trans-sectarian and anti-sectarian project, seeks to achieve its objectives presented in this program, in accordance with the mechanisms set out in its internal rules. These objectives are essentially to eliminate the system of sectarian and political quotas, to strengthen the civil and democratic character of the state, to form a national parliament whose members are characterized with integrity and competence, to restore the status of the parliament among citizens and provide it with the opportunity to exercise its effective oversight role. The objectives of the alliance also include achieving social justice, combating corruption, promoting peace and security, implementing the reconstruction process and the guaranteeing the rights and freedoms of citizens and their dignified lives.
The alliance “Saeroun” is a new model that has emerged from the core of society and from the popular protest movement where cooperation and coordination developed and grew among our patriotic forces, of all shades, that participated in this movement. The alliance is facing big tasks in the political, security, economic, social, cultural and media fields:
First: Reform and Building the State
The alliance “Saeroun” strives for:
- Establishing a civil state based on citizenship and ensuring social justice, a state that is strong with its institutions, capable of taking its independent decisions, that reflect its prestige, the country’s national sovereignty, territorial integrity and unity, and establishing balanced Arab, regional and international relations based on common interests, non-interference in internal affairs and mutual respect for the sovereignty and independence of each state.
This state relies, in formulating and implementing public policies on patriotic and competent professionals and technocrats, who sincerely work for the people and the homeland, through the implementation of programs for change and reform, without discrimination and the policy of sectarian-ethnic quotas.
- Developing a strategy to combat terrorism and extremism, based on an integrated system of political, security, economic, social, cultural and media measures aimed at drying up the financial, political and ideological sources of terrorism and extending the state's influence.
- Achieving national unity based on a federal Iraq that is unified with its various ethnicities and sects, and guaranteeing the rights of all on the basis of the Constitution, the rule of law, institutions, political pluralism and the peaceful transfer of power.
- Achieving societal reconciliation and civil peace.
- Solving the problems existing between the Kurdistan Region and the Federal Government on the basis of the Constitution and with the aim of strengthening national unity.
- Guaranteeing the legitimate rights of minorities in accordance with the Constitution, and ensuring the freedom of religious beliefs and the participation of all the minorities in political and social life.
- Enacting legislations that ensure the implementation of necessary reforms in various fields, that would include reviewing, revising and amending the Constitution, especially in relation to some vague and controversial articles, in order to strengthen the federal democratic structure of the state.
- Reforming the electoral system to ensure regular and periodic fair and free elections, and enacting a fair electoral law that allows broad participation and without any discrimination among citizens.
- Ensuring the good management of the state and the spending of public funds, and the provision of opportunities for all citizens to enjoy constitutional rights, duties and freedoms on an equal basis.
- Independence of the judiciary and activating the role of the public prosecution.
- In the field of state administration, emphasis should be placed on the adoption of standards of competence and integrity, the application of the Civil Service Law, implementing administrative reform, combating bureaucracy and red tape, and the adoption of electronic governance.
Second: Social justice
Among the first objectives of the "Saeroun" alliance are to defend the interests, rights and freedoms of the people, especially the poor, to provide them with decent living, to review the legislations related to wages, salaries and privileges, reducing the income gap, to adopt a fair tax system, provide basic services with minimum costs, and improve the contents of the ration card.
In order to achieve these objectives, the “Saeroun” alliance will strive to:
- Enact a legislation to unify the salaries and privileges of the three leading bodies [i.e. the Presidency, the Prime ministership and Parliament] and ministers to be in line with their peers in public office.
- Reduce the number of security teams assigned to the three leading bodies [i.e. the Presidency, the Prime ministership and Parliament], ministers and members of parliament, so that they are provided through the Ministries of Interior and Defence.
- Activating the Social Security Law to ensure that it contributes to greater social justice, strengthening the existing social welfare network and developing it to include the establishment of funds to provide benefits in the cases of unemployment and incapacity as a result of employment and old age, and developing an effective system for financing such funds. In addition, providing social guarantees for pensioners, the elderly, housewives, widows and orphans, paying attention to caring for the disabled and people with special needs, and paying special attention to the families of the martyrs and the wounded.
- Ensuring the rights of women and expanding their participation in economic, social and political life. Developing economic, social and legislative policies and programs aimed at improving the situation of the youth of various strata, expanding their participation in political and economic life and creating a healthy environment to utilize and develop their potential.
- Enacting laws and legislations on the rights of the child aimed at protecting and nurturing children and providing appropriate conditions for the development of their capacities and talents, protecting them from violence, banning child labour and the prohibition of all forms of exploitation against them.
- Protection of human rights and civil liberties: Freedom of thought, belief and expression; freedom of the media and the press; freedom of party, professional and trade union work; freedom of demonstrating, sit-ins and all forms of peaceful protest. Stressing on the implementation of the Constitution in the field of rights and freedoms, and procedures for accounting for human rights violations.
- Supporting civil society organizations and providing means to involve them in addressing citizens' issues and finding solutions to their problems and the problems of the country in general.
Third: Combating corruption
The “Saeroun” alliance seeks to develop an effective strategy for combating corruption through:
- Adopting a set of legislative, executive and supervisory measures, in accordance with mechanisms that ensure the application of the principle of transparency and freedom of information, and placing the right person in the right place.
- Activating the cases against the most corrupt officials, ensuring that all the accused are brought to justice, and activating the principle of no-impunity.
- Striving to recover the money that was looted and smuggled abroad, in accordance with the legal regulations of the United Nations.
- Legislation of the law on illegal gain, and banning people indicted for corruption from standing for public office.
- Supporting and developing institutions concerned with combating corruption, and ensuring that they are led by competent, independent and impartial administrations.
- Reviewing the status of real estate seized by the influential politicians and their parties, and recovering what was seized illegally.
Fourth: Basic services
The “Saeroun” alliance seeks to:
- Improve basic social services, especially health and education services, defending their provision free of charge. To provide public services, and securing the necessary resources for the implementation of water, electricity, transport, housing, communications, and municipal and service projects.
- Securing the return of displaced and forcibly evicted persons to their cities and towns, the reconstruction of liberated areas, which still lack the most basic services, the allocation the necessary funds, and not to change the demographic nature of these areas.
In the field of education, “Saeroun” seeks to:
- Address the infrastructure problems through the construction of new schools.
- Pay attention to free education through the activation of the relevant law.
- Review and renew the curricula.
- Improve the working conditions of teachers and provide the necessary support and protection for them in order to be able to perform well their noble mission.
- Train teachers to keep pace with new developments.
- Develop and implement plans to eradicate illiteracy, and to tackle the problem of dropping out of education.
- Reassess private education and emphasize the need for private educational institutions to comply with the laws and regulations stipulated in the existing relevant legislations.
- Enact a new law for student discipline that corresponds to the current stage.
- Create employment opportunities for graduates.
In the field of health, the “Saeroun” alliance seeks to:
- Build a network of health guarantees of a social character by providing free health care to citizens, both preventive and curative, improving the level of health services, expanding the network of government hospitals and clinics in the urban, rural and remote areas, and providing them with the latest therapeutic medical and diagnostic equipment.
In the field of housing, “Saeroun” seeks to:
- Resolve this problem and the violations in this area to ensure the rights and needs of citizens, by giving the state the responsibility of providing housing that is suitable and healthy for low-income people and other citizens who are in need, in accordance with a comprehensive national plan to address the housing crisis.
- Ensure that the state shall assist the cooperative societies and the industrial and trade union institutions to build houses for their employees.
- Enhance the role of the Real Estate Bank and the Housing Fund, as well as the role of specialized banks that are concerned with financing private housing.
Fifth: Socio-economic issues
The “Saeroun” alliance believes that it is not possible talk about economic development without the development of the material, social and cultural infrastructure, and without ensuring the proper use of the funds allocated for this purpose. To achieve this, “Saeroun” seeks to:
- Establish development funds and manage them properly.
- Good use of soft loans that were granted to Iraq recently.
- Support the private sector and strengthen the banks concerned with industry and agriculture.
- Adopt a rational oil policy, enact an effective law for oil and gas, reduce the reliance of our economy on oil, and re-establishing the National Oil Company to undertake the management and supervision of exploration, extraction and development in the oil and gas fields, pay attention to the petrochemical and refining industries, and link the oil resources to sustainable development and the process of industrialization and the modernization of agriculture.
- Support and develop the sectors of industry, agriculture and productive services to expand the base of our national economy, and to develop a comprehensive plan for the process of investment in productive sectors and services.
- Complete the implementation of the suspended projects, numbering about 6,000 projects, and provide appropriate allocations according to priority.
- Develop mechanisms for coordination between the financial and monetary policies in order to develop the process of economic development, and seek to raise the real value of the Iraqi dinar, to enable the Iraqi citizen to meet his/her necessary needs while curbing inflation rates and strive to stabilize it.
- Reconsider the import policy and the saving policy, addressing the negative consequences in this field, and to reconsider the policy of unbalanced spending.
- It will also seek to reconsider the constitutional violations in the annual budgets, by stressing that these budgets will not be approved unless they are accompanied by final accounts.
- Combat the financial speculation that is taking place in the banking system through private banks and unlicensed companies, and activate the role of the Central Bank of Iraq in tightening oversight of banks and companies.
- Provide financial and legal conditions to attract competent and highly qualified Iraqis abroad in various fields.
- Pay more attention to the Iraqi countryside, modernize agriculture, reclaim lands and encourage farmers to take care of their land and increase its productivity in order to achieve food security for society through financing on concessional terms, and to guarantee fair prices for agricultural products. In addition, it will seek to protect the local products by enacting a law that imposes fees on imported and competitive agricultural products, rationalizing imports, paying attention to the production of agricultural commodities, and the rehabilitation of agricultural production plants and the factories and companies of the industrial sector.
- Address the unemployment problem as one of the main priorities of economic policy, especially among graduates, and guaranteeing the right to work for all citizens, without favoritism or mediation on the basis of partisan or sectarian affiliation, and in accordance with the Civil Service Law.
- The “Saeroun” alliance defends Iraq's water rights by negotiating with neighboring countries, using international regulations in this regard, working to stop water waste, using modern technologies in irrigation, and completing desalination projects.
In the field of culture, the “Saeroun” alliance seeks to:
- Allocate a fixed percentage (1%) of the annual state budget for culture.
- Guarantee the rights of intellectuals, freedom of creativity and intellectual protection of the cultural product.
- Ensure that the state shall provide support to cultural associations and organizations in order to exercise their activities.
- Support the claim for the establishment of a higher council for culture, literature and arts, and to enact a law for leave devoted to literary work.
In the field of sports, the “Saeroun” alliance seeks to:
- Restructure the sports sector, and enact laws for sports clubs and federations and for the Olympic Committee.
- Develop the infrastructure and prepare administrative leading bodies that are specialized in sports,
- Pay attention to sporting pioneers and champions, and develop a plan to train and develop young athletes.
Sixth: Armed Forces
- The “Saeroun” alliance seeks to build the armed forces on the basis of professionalism, competence and allegiance to the people and the homeland. It strives to develop the competence of the armed forces, as well as putting an end to the manifestations of the possession of arms outside the framework of the security services.
We, in “Saeroun”, will work relentlessly for the lofty goals of our alliance. We are determined to work together, in a sincere and serious manner, in order to fulfil the commitments of our alliance towards citizens and voters, so that “Saeroun” becomes synonymous with work and hope for establishing a democratic civil state, that will put the country on the path of attaining security, stability and prosperity, and achieving sustainable development, real progress and social justice.