The president of the Iraqi Parliament, Mohamed al-Halbusi, announced his resignation on Monday due to the political paralysis in the country, while the assembly held its first session in two months on Wednesday.
Al Halbusi announced the decision in a speech delivered at the Al Rafidain Forum for Dialogue in Baghdad, and it will be voted on Wednesday in the first plenary convened since, on July 30, supporters of the Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr stormed the assembly. . .
The current president of the Lower House justified that he made the decision after the deputies of the Sadrista Bloc, the party with the most representatives in the Chamber, withdrew their 73 elected officials due to the blocking of their proposals to appoint a new president and form a government. , a process that has been stopped for 11 months.
After the resignation of the Sadrist Bloc, the Shiite Marco de Coordination coalition, close to Iran, won the 73 free seats and tried to present a candidate, provoking protests from supporters of Al Sadr, who took over Parliament and camped outside its gates for a month. to prevent a plenary session from being held.
“The rapid events that went through the country were not easy for anyone, the incidents were painful, unfortunate and had to be faced,” said Al Halbusi, who is also one of Sadr’s main political allies.
Iraq was on the verge of civil war in late August, when armed clashes broke out in Baghdad between Sadrists, the army and the ruling Popular Crowd group, whose political branch is represented in the Coordination Framework.
The clashes caused at least 35 deaths and ended after the announcement of Al Sadr’s political withdrawal.
This Wednesday’s parliamentary session will be the first since July 30, when Halbusi himself suspended the activity of the chamber and, according to the published agenda, will vote for the resignation of its president.
According to the sectarian system established in Iraq after the fall of the dictator Saddam Hussein (1979-2003), the president of parliament must be a Sunni Muslim, the prime minister a Shiite and the head of state Kurdish.
Source: TSF
