(Najaf) The influential Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, given the great winner of the legislative elections in Iraq, reiterated on Thursday the need to form a “majority” government, while calling for reason the “losers” of the poll, after several weeks of tension.
In a multi-faith, multi-ethnic Iraq, government formation is preceded by interminable negotiations and the major parties dominating the Shiite community traditionally have to come to a compromise, regardless of the number of seats in parliament.
According to the still preliminary results of the early legislative elections of October 10, Moqtada al-Sadr won more than 70 seats in Parliament, which has 329.
Since then, he has repeatedly proclaimed that the future prime minister must be from his party, experts believing that he could seek to build his own parliamentary majority by allying himself with other formations outside the community. Shiite.
“Our options are either a majority government or the opposition,” Sadr said at a press conference.
Concerning its strategy, analysts evoke a possible alliance with the influential head of Parliament, the Sunni Mohamed al-Halboussi, and the Democratic Party of Kurdistan (PDK, of the Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani).
Mr. Sadr began his conference by addressing “the political forces that see themselves as losers in the elections”.
“Your defeat should not pave the way for the ruin of the democratic process in Iraq,” Sadr said. “What you are doing now will make you lose your past and increase the people’s rejection of you.”
Since the legislative elections, supporters of the former paramilitaries of Hachd al-Chaabi, unhappy with their score, have launched a sit-in in the capital and tried to enter the ultra-secure Green Zone, housing government institutions and embassies.
Tensions peaked with an attempted assassination of Prime Minister Moustafa al-Kazimi, who escaped unharmed in early November from an unclaimed drone attack on his residence in Baghdad.
The Conquest Alliance, the political showcase of Hachd al-Chaabi, an influential coalition of pro-Iran ex-paramilitaries, has lost nearly two-thirds of its parliamentary bloc, according to preliminary results.