World Spotlight: Iraqi Parliament Holiday

To foreign eyes, it seems insensitive -- even criminally negligent--of Iraq's parliamentarians to take a four-week vacation while their country struggles with monstrous problems and their countrymen cope with the 110°F (43°C) heat. But to Iraqis, callous disregard is pretty much exactly what they have come to expect from their politicians. Some of the most prominent Iraqi politicians spend little time in the country, much less in parliament. Egregious absenteeism cuts across sectarian and ethnic lines: perennial no-shows include Shi'ite elder Ibrahim al-Jaafari, Sunni leader Saleh Mutlak and secular stalwarts Iyad Allawi and Adnan Pachachi. (Al-Jaafari and Allawi, both former Prime Ministers, are trying to unseat the incumbent, Nouri al-Maliki.) "There's no point in going to parliament," Allawi told TIME recently. "Nothing important is done there anyway."

When parliament is in session, it struggles to find a quorum for deliberations. Repeated attempts by TIME to get attendance figures from the office of the Speaker have been rebuffed with the claim that such data is too "politically sensitive" to be published. But Iraqis don't need statistics: they can tell from the wide swaths of empty seats clearly visible in the live broadcasts on state TV.

This no-show mentality couldn't come at a worse time for U.S. efforts in Iraq. With the surge at its peak and violence against troops declining, the crucial next step is political reconciliation under al-Maliki's government. But even when parliament convenes, votes are invariably along sectarian lines, with minority groups like the Sunnis routinely boycotting sessions or abstaining.

So Iraqis have low to no expectations from their MPs. "What difference does it make if the parliament is on a break?" says Maha Hussein, a Baghdad schoolteacher. "For all the work they do, they might as well give themselves a yearlong vacation."