"The present government is not competent."

USA Today reported this week from Baghdad that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is in ever deeper political trouble. "A broad range of prominent Iraqi lawmakers say they have lost confidence in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's ability to reconcile the country's warring factions," the paper reported.

Al Maliki's ineffectiveness has been a major problem for some time. In order to maintain himself in office, for example, he long provided cover to Moktada Al Sadr's thugs, because Al Sadr's parliamentarians were an essential part of the Shiite coalition keeping Al Maliki in office. But Al Maliki has been able to accomplish little in return, either in terms of Iraq's security or on the political front. USA Today wrote that, according to various Iraqi legislators, he "lacks the support in parliament to push through laws, such as a plan to distribute oil revenues, that could reduce tensions between Sunnis and Shiites. Iraq's parliament has failed to pass major legislation since a U.S.-led security plan began on Feb. 14."

However, according to Sadiq al-Rikabi, who is a political adviser to al-Maliki, there is no viable alternative to Al Maliki. "Suppose he resigns," al-Rikabi told USA Today. "Then what is the solution?"

Actually, the fate of Al Maliki's government has been the subject of a great many Iraqi rumors and possible scenarios, and I have posted about the subject often. I wrote in March that, "The two major candidates to replace Al Maliki remain Ayad Allawi and Adel Abdul Mahdi, both of whom seem to be using the press to maneuver. Earlier this year, Ayad Allawi told the London-based newspaper Asharq Al Awsat that he didn't think Al Maliki's government was a national government…. He and other Iraqi political figures have been trying to form 'a national salvation front.'"

I have also noted that Allawi has the support of Iraq's elder statesman, Adnan Pachachi, a Sunni with secular liberal-democratic views. Pachachi has told Arabic newspapers that Allawi is acceptable to most Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds and non-Muslims in Iraq. Allawi and Pachachi are reported to have lined up significant parliamentary support for their alliance in the event that the Al Maliki government faces a vote of no confidence, though according to most recent reports their support remained short of the necessary parliamentary majority.

It is vital that the Iraqi political establishment make meaningful progress on oil-revenue sharing and other issues involving reconciliation. But according to Qasim Dawood, a Shiite legislator who has until now supported Al Maliki, that is unlikely to happen under the current leadership. "The present government is not competent," Dawood told USA Today. "It's more or less paralyzed, inactive. I doubt very much that this government can continue in power much longer."