Salah Hassan Baban “I lost my seat in Parliament after I received more than 3000 votes in the 2018 elections, because I did not pay three million dollars to the head of the bloc that I ran with, so another losing candidate won by paying the same amount.” With this “opportunistic treatment” with the candidates, SA (45 years old), a former candidate for the parliamentary seat, is likely to hold the next parliamentary elections. He says, “There are two main sources of financing party budgets for the elections, the first is through corruption in the ministries that they seize, and the second is from external support, especially Iran and Saudi Arabia.”

With renewed hopes for holding parliamentary elections on October 10, talk about sources of funding for Iraqi parties in parliamentary elections has returned, raising doubts about the existence of common points or link between the depreciation of the Iraqi dinar against the US dollar and the preparation of influential Iraqi parties to finance their election campaigns, through Several outlets, the most vital of which are private banks, at a time when statistics issued by the Independent High Electoral Commission indicate that about 300 political parties and blocs have so far registered their participation in the upcoming elections with the possibility that the number of political parties and blocs will reach twice what it was in the 2018 elections, which reached 204 parties and blocs.
The political parties ’evasion in Iraq helped the law that stipulates that the parties’ work must be regulated and their sources of funding announced and not disclosed to the public opinion and the voter, provided that they have more than one source of funding, among internal sources, mainly related to ministerial contracts and investment projects that the parties obtain after their participation in The formation of the government within the political quota system in effect in the post-2003 period, specifically the large blocs, and between another external source, where candidates receive financial support from their regional sponsors, especially Saudi Arabia and Iran. While the candidate affirms p. A to “Darj” that the first step in the electoral race has really begun for the big parties by distributing some valuable gifts such as pistols and the like, in addition to food, clothes and various gifts with the purchase of the debts of some media professionals, writers, poets, as well as clerics.
S.A. believes that the political parties resorted this time to a new trick to achieve greater financial gains through lowering the local currency and raising the dollar, which would bring them huge profits, especially since most of the parties own private banks.

The Iraqi government started with the initial steps to implement the terms of the white paper that it launched and marketed a lot over the past months to support its economy by raising the price of the dollar against the local currency from 1184 dinars to 1450 dinars to the dollar at the selling prices approved by the Ministry of Finance of the Central Bank, and this step was negatively reflected on the prices of goods, commodities and needs. The daily percentage of the citizen is not less than 25 percent.
Doubts and many questions have been raised about the possibility that the influential parties in Iraq would stand behind the decision to reduce the local currency against the dollar after the collapse of the dinar, in order to benefit from it to fill the deficit of the government in which it participates and to be able to pay the salaries of its employees in addition to strengthening its budgets as the elections approach, but the Al-Kazemi government and an extension of its failure In the political, security and health files, in addition to her fear of revealing the killers of the demonstrators as she promised before her arrival to the prime minister, although they are known to her, her monetary policies caused employees to lose about 25 percent of the value of their salaries.

​Political writer Ali Al-Baidar agrees with S.A. about the existence of many political parties that own private banks that have lent to the government knowing the poor conditions of the country at the current stage, and they do not have any other means to recover their money with the interest resulting from that, which reached 13 percent, It is thus pressuring the government to force it to take this step, without having any other option to redress bankruptcy, spending on state institutions, salaries of employees and retirees, and a social protection network that includes 8 million beneficiaries.

Al-Baidar describes the Iraqi Central Bank’s submission directly to political interference as “the biggest and greatest mistakes” committed by the political system, and stresses the necessity of keeping this financial institution away from political interference, as it exercises a basic task, which is drawing and implementing monetary policy.
​A former employee of the Independent High Electoral Commission, who was among the cadres that supervised the polling process in 2018, confirms that the candidates’ campaigns cost about 60 thousand dollars at least for each of them, and sometimes more than two and a half million dollars for the prominent leaders of the first row in the parties The window, 60 percent of it is spent on purchasing aid for the destitute groups who live below the poverty line, especially in the central and southern regions of the country and the capital, Baghdad, while the other percentages are distributed on organizing various festivals, seminars and celebrations to support the candidates’ programs.
No two people disagree that the decline of the dinar and the rise of the dollar reflected on the life of the simple citizen, increased psychological and economic pressures on him, and his life became more bitter, especially with the rise in food prices, electricity and water services, and the pressures of the Corona epidemic on the social and economic situation.

​Journalist Hana Riyadh believes that the argument that the government relied on to approve raising the dollar and reducing the salaries of state employees and international borrowing, due to the impact of the Corona virus on the overall economic situation in the world as a whole, is no longer useful. Oil prices have risen again and exports are still in effect. The market was already affected and led to a recession in global markets, but Iraq suffers from complex problems, including the problem of financial mismanagement and corruption. She asked: “How can we absolve the government of creating a crisis? In fact, there is manipulation and intentional to confuse the citizen, and to follow a policy of trauma treatment.
​And whether Al-Kazemi is responsible for the collapse of the local currency, Riyad believes that the prime minister did not come with a popular nomination, but rather party consensus, so he is dependent on those parties.