(Baghdad) Another failure: the election of the Iraqi president scheduled for Saturday was postponed to Wednesday, the two-thirds quorum not having been reached in the Assembly, a new failure after a first postponement in February and a new coup d stopping given to the political calendar.
Posted at 9:59
Following the call for a boycott launched by the Coordination Framework, a pro-Iran Shia coalition, 126 elected officials observed the empty chair policy and only 202 deputies were present (out of a total of 329), while a last parliamentarian did not come forward, an Iraqi parliament official told AFP.
Not having reached the two-thirds quorum required for the vote to take place (220 elected), Parliament decided to postpone the vote to Wednesday, said its media service.
This new failure delays a little more the political calendar of the oil country crossed by strong economic and social turbulences. Because six months after the early legislative elections of October 2021, Iraq still does not know the name of its new president, nor that of its prime minister, keystone of the executive.
Parliamentarians must first elect the head of state so that he in turn appoints the head of government, a position that is the subject of endless negotiations between parties.
“We are obliged to continue to organize sessions until the quorum is reached,” said the speaker of parliament, the influential Sunni leader Mohammed al-Halboussi, according to the official INA news agency.
The Coordination Framework is headwind against the ambition of its great rival, the influential Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr, to form a “majority government” without bringing him on board.
A first attempt to elect the head of state on February 7 had already ended in failure due, already, to a massive boycott of deputies. They wanted to give themselves more time after the sidelining of a favorite, Hoshyar Zebari, caught up in corruption scandals.
For this new election, two candidates among the 40 in the running stand out: the outgoing Barham Saleh, President of Iraq since 2018 and from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (UPK), and Rebar Ahmed of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan (PDK ). The winning candidate must obtain at least two-thirds of the votes.
Since the first multi-party elections in 2005, held after the 2003 US invasion that overthrew Saddam Hussein, the presidency – a largely ceremonial post – has traditionally gone to a PUK Kurd. In exchange, the PDK is at the head of the Kurdish regional government in Erbil.
“Political failure”
But the failure of Saturday’s vote also highlights the deep cleavages in Iraqi political life, cleavages that infinitely delay the legislative and executive process. The budget for the year 2022 has, for example, still not been adopted by elected officials.
In the hemicycle, the turbulent, but unavoidable Moqtada Sadr, big winner of the October 2021 legislative elections, has shaped a tripartite coalition with Sunni parties and the Kurdish PDK. It brings together a total of 155 elected officials.
On the other hand, the Coordination Framework, an alliance of pro-Iran Shiite formations behind the call for a boycott, has around a hundred deputies.
The alliance around Moqtada Sadr, dubbed “Rescue of the Fatherland”, supports Rebar Ahmed for the presidency.
Anticipating what will happen next, Moqtada Sadr then wants to entrust the post of prime minister to his cousin and brother-in-law Jaafar al-Sadr, the current Iraqi ambassador to London. To take office, the latter will have to obtain an absolute majority in a vote of confidence in Parliament.
The Coordination Framework meant by its call for a boycott to protest against the “majority government” that Moqtada Sadr calls for. The Cadre as well as the former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki want to continue the Iraqi tradition of the government of consensus around all the Shiite parties.
The failure of the vote on Saturday caused little reaction from the Iraqis who largely abstained during the legislative elections last October.