Ceremonies are Over, Lets Go to Work

The Parliament of Kurdistan launched today its third session. The even was a ceremony rather than a serious work day. All the members of the parliament were inaugurated by pledging to be faithful to serving the people of Kurdistan. Although, this marks a great step in our strife for democracy, but the event itself was tainted by a number of irregularities.
First of all, the head of the parliament and his or her assistants should be elected not selected by the parliament. The way the new head of the parliament was chosen today, was exactly the same way, the heads of the political establishment are chosen; i.e through announcing their names and being selected without any competition and through claps rather than votes. This is a bizarre move in a democracy. It puts our efforts for being democratic under serious questioning.
Second, It is not understandable why should all those people be invited to a legislative session as important as the first meeting of the new parliament. Was the first day of the new parliament a political campaign or a legislative session that requires adhering to the rules and the regulations that the body set forth for itself. Why should all the consulates present in Erbil invited to this meeting? What was the purpose for them to be invited? If it was to show them that we are democratic and have a parliament, I think we just did a big dissevers to our cause by showing them that although we are trying to be so through holding elections, but we failed to behave democratically in the first day of this legislative cycle.
It is a failure to predetermine will be the head, his deputy and the secretary of the Parliament without even casting a vote for those people by the new members of the Parliament.
We need transparency in our political behavior, it is not enough to claim democracy only through words without matching those words with deeds. It is very hard to stay optimistic after the end of the first day of the new parliament. We cant justify any optimism just by hearing our national anthem and a big participation of the international representation in the ceremony.
The lesson learned here is that power doesn't bow to the rules of democracy just because it is good to do so. There should be pressure from outside to make it accountable. This should be very clear when the new government is selected. The parliament should have a strong say in choosing the ministers to serve the new cabinet.
It is very difficult to assume the ability of the new parliament to bypass the political stalemate that could result from the failure of tr ascending politics to policies and moving from conflict to consensus.