Ousting Maliki, Maybe

"My sources are telling me that serious efforts are underway to introduce a parliamentary no-confidence vote in Maliki’s government sometime in early December.
Supposedly the changes to the cabinet line-up would be minor, substituting Maliki for either Adel Abdel-Mahdi or Ibrahim al-Ja’afari or Ali al-Adeeb (…if Abdel-Mahdi gets it, then either of the other two candidates may take the vice-presidency slot vacated by him), and Hussein al-Shahrestani, the oil minister, for either Nadim al-Jaberi or Ali al-Adeeb (if the latter doesn’t become either the PM or the Vice-President, and conditional on him turning against Maliki, of course).

The thinking, especially from the Kurdish end, is that Maliki has grown too big for his britches. That, and Meghan O’Sullivan is back in the mix of things, forever trying to turn her guy, Abdel-Mahdi, into Mr. PM.

Technically, one would think that the Sunnis would not yield to a Kurdish-led bid to unseat Maliki, given the competition that’s been going on in Mosul and Kirkuk, but weakening an increasingly confident Shia prime minister (…who is trying to build an independent power base among Sunni tribes in Mosul and Kirkuk) is too enticing of a prospect; why putter around in the provinces when taking down Maliki makes Tariq al-Hashemi more politically relevant in Baghdad?"
Talisman Gate