The impasse is total: the 73 deputies of the current of the Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr, the most important formation of the Iraqi Parliament, presented their resignation on Sunday, a gesture probably intended to exert pressure to accelerate the formation of the government, stalled since the legislative elections of 2021.
“We have reluctantly accepted the demands of our brothers and sisters, representatives of the Sadrist bloc, to resign,” Parliament Speaker Mohammed al-Halboussi announced on Twitter after receiving the resignation letters from the 73 elected members of Moqtada Sadr. .
The Shiite leader, accustomed to political symbols, had himself asked his deputies on Thursday to “prepare” their resignation.
The services of the Parliament were not available in the evening to comment on the constitutional implications of this decision.
But according to Iraqi political scientist Hamzeh Hadad, “Parliament still needs to ratify” these resignations “by an absolute majority” for them to become effective. However, the parliamentary holidays began Thursday and the elected officials must not find the hemicycle until August.
“A little more political theater from the Sadrist movement and Halboussi,” said Mr. Hadad.
Beyond the symbolic, this upheaval underlines the total political impasse in which Iraq finds itself, with a taste of deja vu, the negotiations between parties to set up a government and appoint a Prime Minister generally playing the extensions, like this time.
For eight months and the early legislative elections of October 2021, from which the Sadrist movement emerged as the big winner, the government of Prime Minister Moustafa Kazimi has been content to expedite current affairs.
Mr. Kazimi, in power since 2020 and who does not belong to any political party, does not have a free hand to try to resolve the social crisis that the 41 million inhabitants of the oil country are going through.
The country suffers from several ills: nepotism, corruption – Iraq pointing to a poor 157th place out of 180 countries in the ranking of Transparency International – and energy problems, in particular.
“Majority” versus “Consensus”
Although it is one of the countries best endowed with hydrocarbons, Iraq is unable to provide electricity to its citizens on a regular basis, which causes load shedding and fuels the anger of the population, especially in this early summer when temperatures approach 50 degrees.
It was these demands that had pushed thousands of Iraqis into the streets in the fall of 2019, during an unprecedented revolt.
In Parliament, the two poles of political Shiism – that of Moqtada Sadr and the pro-Iran Coordination Framework – continue to claim a majority and the right to appoint the prime minister.
Moqtada Sadr, allied with Sunni and Kurdish forces, intends to break the tradition which wants all Shiite forces to be involved in a “consensus government”.
The Shiite cleric wants a “majority government” that would push his opponents of the Coordination Framework into opposition.
He has not succeeded in doing so until today and, as a sign of protest, himself recently affirmed that his deputies sat “in the opposition”, leaving to the Coordination Framework the prerogative of the formation of a government.
The “majority government” that Moqtada Sadr calls for would be articulated around his current, the party of Sunni President of Parliament Mohammed al-Halboussi and the Democratic Party of Kurdistan (PDK). These three formations bring together 155 deputies out of 329 and therefore do not have a majority in the hemicycle.
The Coordination Framework notably includes the Conquest Alliance, a political showcase for the former pro-Iran paramilitaries of Hachd al-Chaabi. It brings together 83 elected officials.
For lack of a clear majority and consensus, Parliament has failed three times since the beginning of the year to organize the election of the President of the Republic, the first stage before the designation of the Prime Minister and the formation of the government.
All the deadlines set by the Constitution have been exceeded.
One of the avenues mentioned for breaking the impasse would be to dissolve Parliament and organize new legislative elections, but to do this, the deputies would have to dissolve the Assembly themselves.