Seven months of efforts to form a new government in Iraq were in turmoil on Monday, a day after powerful Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered members of parliament loyal to him to step down from the seats. which they won in the October elections.
Mr Sadr, who has become one of the largest political forces in Iraq since his rise in 2003, has no formal role but commands the loyalty of the largest bloc in the 329-seat parliament. His movement’s 73 lawmakers resigned on Sunday after Mr Sadr’s months-long negotiations failed to form a coalition government with Sunni and Kurdish partners.
On Monday, Sadr’s candidate for prime minister, Jaafar al-Sadr, a cousin of the Shia cleric and currently Iraq’s ambassador to London, said in a post on Twitter that he withdrew his candidacy.
Talks about forming a government came to nothing due to disagreements over who would become president. Under Iraq’s parliamentary system, which came into being after a US-led coalition overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003, the president appoints a prime minister and ministers. Mercurial Muqtada al-Sadr suggested that by ceasing negotiations, he was sacrificing his bloc’s hard-won gains in last year’s elections so that a government could be formed.
“This move is considered a sacrifice for the homeland and the people to save them from an unknown fate,” Sadr said in a statement. “If the survival of the Sadrist bloc is an obstacle to the formation of the government, then all representatives of the bloc are ready to resign from parliament.”
His announcement culminated in months of political paralysis that highlighted the dysfunction of Iraq’s political system and the fragmentation of its multiple Shia Muslim political blocs. That inter-Shia division has in recent years supplanted sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shia groups as a major source of Iraqi instability.
Mr. Sadr, the son of a respected Shia cleric who was assassinated during Saddam Hussein’s regime, formed a militia in 2003 to fight US forces after the US invasion of Iraq turned into an occupation. He also fought against Iraqi government forces in Baghdad and in the southern city of Basra before disbanding the fighters.
It was not immediately clear whether the resignation was merely a negotiation tactic on his part or a genuine break from parliamentary politics. But his withdrawal from parliament and the related announcement that he would close most Sadr offices across the country raised fears that he could replace political negotiations with destabilizing street protests – something he rather uses as leverage for pressure. used.
“With the sadrists apparently removed from the actual political process, their history is that when they are not involved in politics they are on the streets,” said Feisal al-Istrabadi, director of the Center for the Study of the Middle East. . at Indiana University.
Presenting himself as an Iraqi nationalist, Mr Sadr is considered the Iraqi Shia political leader least associated with Iran. His withdrawal opens the door for other Iranian-backed parties to make progress in forming a government.
The resignation itself will not lead to elections. Instead, the candidates who received the second-highest number of votes in October would replace Sadr loyalists in parliament, lawyers said.
Constitutional experts said the parliamentary resignation was effective after being accepted by the speaker, Sunni politician Mohammed al-Halboosi, and did not require parliamentary approval.