For the third time, the Iraqi parliament failed to elect the new president, and therefore the prime minister. Less than two hundred deputies attended the session on March 30, while the Iraqi constitution requires the presence of two thirds of the assembly, composed of 329 people, to elect one of the 44 candidates. A third of the parliamentarians boycotted the session: twenty were independent, the others mostly part of the Coordination Framework coalition led by former Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki.
The political stalemate has now lasted for six months, since the elections of 10 October 2021. Interestingly, the absence of a government does not seem to have an impact on people’s daily lives. Students go to school, office workers, shopkeepers and their customers are busy shopping for the holy month of Ramadan. In Baghdad last week, in front of the many buildings of the government or private companies, there were at least eight demonstrations to ask for jobs. Public opinion awaits the ratification of the state budget and many laws firm in parliament.
The unknowns of the moment
The Shia promoters of the parliamentary boycott insist on the creation of a broad and united Shiite coalition, Al Maliki said. For his part, Muqtada al Sadr, leader of the coalition Save the Nation, prefers “political stalemate, rather than returning to the same circle of corruption”, as he wrote in a tweet.
Parliament has until April 6 to elect the president, based on the federal court, the country’s highest judicial authority. Once that date has passed, we will enter an unprecedented situation, in which the constitution does not specify how to proceed. Therefore, if the parties involved do not reach an agreement, two possibilities open up: to reach a last-minute compromise between the two opposing coalitions to form an emergency government (a hypothesis difficult to imagine) or to go back to the polls. The time available is very little.
(Translation by Francesco De Lellis)