Iraqi president appoints Mohammed Allawi as new PM

BAGHDAD: Iraqi President Barham Salih appointed on Saturday Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi as new prime minister, State TV reported, after squabbling political parties failed to name a candidate in the two months since the former premier was ousted by popular protests.

Allawi would run the country until early elections can be held. He must form a new government within a month.

Former Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi resigned in November amid mass anti-government unrest where hundreds of thousands of Iraqis took to the streets demanding the removal of Iraq's political elite. Nearly 500 protesters have been killed in a deadly crackdown by security forces.

Allawi was quoted by State TV as saying he would resign if political blocs sought to impose candidates for different ministries.

He also called on protesters to continue demonstrating until their demands are met.

However, protesters are likely to oppose him as prime minister.

For demonstrators who demand a removal of what they say is a corrupt ruling elite, the former communications minister under ex-premier Nuri al-Maliki - who presided over the fall of multiple Iraqi cities to Daesh in 2014 and is accused of pro-Shiite sectarian policies - is part of the system and therefore unacceptable.

Iraq is facing its biggest crisis since the military defeat of Daesh in 2017. A mostly Shiite popular uprising in Baghdad and the south challenges the country's mainly Iran-backed Shiite Muslim ruling elite.

The country has been thrown into further disarray since the killing of Iranian military mastermind Qassem Soleimani in a US drone strike in Baghdad on Jan. 3. Iran responded with missile attacks on bases hosting US forces, pushing the region to the brink of an all-out conflict.

Pro-Iran politicians have tried to use those events to shift the focus away from popular discontent with their grip on power and towards anti-American rallies and demands for the withdrawal of US troops.

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Iraq’s president named former communications minister Mohammad Allawi as the country’s new prime minister on Saturday after an 11th-hour consensus among political blocs, but the streets seemed divided on his nomination.

Baghdad and the mainly Shiite south have been gripped by four months of anti-government rallies demanding snap elections, a politically independent prime minister and accountability for corruption and protest-related violence.

Faced with pressure from the street and the Shiite religious leadership, Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi resigned in December and political life came to a standstill.

In a bid to end the paralysis, President Barham Saleh gave political blocs until Saturday to name a replacement to Abdel Mahdi or else he would appoint his own candidate.

On Saturday evening, Allawi posted a video to Twitter saying Saleh had nominated him as the new premier.

“After the president appointed me to form a new government a short while ago, I wanted to talk to you first,” he said, addressing the camera in colloquial Iraqi dialect.

“I will ask you to keep up the protests, because if you are not with me, I won’t be able to do anything,” Allawi said.

There was no formal announcement from Saleh or other government bodies, and the main protest camp in Tahrir Square seemed split on his nomination.

“Allawi is rejected, Allawi is rejected!” some protesters chanted, but others appeared to rally in support of him.

- Allawi sets conditions -


According to the constitution, Allawi now has one month to form his cabinet, which would need a vote of confidence from parliament.

In Iraq, the cabinet is typically formed by consensus among political rivals after intense horsetrading over influential posts.

“If the (political) blocs try to impose their candidates on me, I’ll come out and talk to you and leave this nomination,” Allawi said.

Allawi served as communications minister twice under former PM Nuri al-Maliki but resigned both times, alleging corruption.

Shortly before Allawi’s announcement, protesters in Tahrir expressed reservations about anyone with previous government experience assuming the premiership and frustration with the slow pace of reforms.

“Anyone who hasn’t been involved in politics before is acceptable,” said Abu Amir al-Rubaye, 50.

“But if Saleh does not find a way to form a government backed by the people, we’ll hang his picture in Tahrir with an ‘X’ across it,” he added.

Protests in Tahrir swelled on Saturday as supporters of Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr returned to the streets.

Sadr controls parliament’s largest bloc and many ministerial posts, but he backed the protests when they erupted in October and his supporters were widely recognised as the best organised demonstrators.

- Sadrists in the streets -


A week ago, he appeared to rethink his support for the protest movement and his hard-core backers dismantled their tents in protest camps across the country.

Within hours of the Sadrists withdrawing, riot police moved in to burn or tear down protest camps and around a dozen demonstrators were killed, medics and police said.

But on Friday he seemed to flip again, calling for his backers “to renew the peaceful, reformist revolution”.

They flooded in the streets on Saturday afternoon, setting up tents in Tahrir with portraits of Sadr and blaring music praising him.

The violence dropped markedly, too.

“Since the Sadrists came back, we’ve implemented a sort of ceasefire and haven’t fired tear gas at protesters,” a member of the security forces told AFP near Tahrir Square, the main protest camp in the capital.

More than 480 people have died in protest-related violence since October, the great majority of them demonstrators killed by live rounds or military-grade tear gas canisters.

Protesters in Tahrir Square have already publicly rejected a number of names floated for prime minister, including former communications minister Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi and current intelligence chief Mustafa Kazemi.

Their portraits, marked with large “X”s over their faces, were hanging in the square along with a big blue poster calling for the United Nations to intervene in the crisis.

The top UN official in Iraq Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert has pushed throughout the week for progress, tweeting on Friday that solutions were “urgently needed” to “break the political deadlock”.

And the country’s top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani piled on the pressure on Friday, saying Iraq must “accelerate the formation of a new government”.

“It is imperative to speed up holding early elections so that the people will have their say,” he said.

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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Iraqi president Barham Salih officially appointed Muhammad Tawfiq Allawi to form the new Iraqi cabinet on Saturday. Protesters in Baghdad and other major cities had already rejected the former Minister of Communications’ candidacy for the role of Prime Minister before it was officially announced. 

Iraqi security analyst Husham al-Hashimi tweeted on Saturday following the appointment of Allawi that the agreement between the Shiite al-Fatih coalition and Allawi will provoke unrest in the streets. The coalition, which placed second in Iraq's 2018 parliamentary elections, is comprised of several political arms of the PMF, the Iran-backed Hashd al-Shaabi militias at the heart of recent tensions between the US and Iran on Iraqi soil.

“The agreement between Fatih coalition and Muhammad Tawfiq Alawi is an agenda agreement and not an agreement to solve the crisis. The agreement is rejected by the movement on the street, and at some point this agreement will provoke the streets, as the engineer Mohammed Allawi needs to push himself away from those restrictions, the demands of the streets invented by nationalist youth, who have great vision and are independent to the extreme limits,” [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]Al-Hashimi.

Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi resigned from his post in late 2019 following months of protests against the government, but remained in the role as the head of a caretaker government as the dominant Shiite blocs of parliament failed to agree on a replacement that is also acceptable to the protesters on the streets.

After Salih selected Saturday as a deadline for influential Shiite political parties to reach an agreement and nominate a candidate whom Salih could assign to form Iraq’s new cabinet, Shiite political factions agreed to nominate Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi. Allawi served as Iraq’s Minister of Communications under Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki from 2006 to 2007 and again from 2010 to 2012, resigning from his post a the end of both stints.

In a video published on Saturday, Allawi announced that he had been appointed by Salih to form the next Iraqi cabinet and called on protesters to continue protesting to help him implement necessary reforms.

“I hereby announce that I have been appointed by the Iraqi President to form the next Iraqi cabinet,” Allawi said in the video. “I call on all protesters to keep protesting, as you will help me and assist me with your protests.”

Young Iraqis have been in the streets of the nation’s southern and central cities since October 2019 to protest the lack of basic services, rampant corruption, and high unemployment in their country.

Following a short pause for a Shiite religious holiday, the protests resumed with increased intensity and widespread demands for the overthrow of the post-2003 political establishment.

More than 600 people have been killed and around 18,000 injured in clashes between protesters, security forces, and pro-Iran militias according to Amnesty International.

Protesters in Baghdad and southern provinces rejected the possible nomination of Allawi multiple times since last month, claiming that he is beholden to establishment parties and voicing their preference for a political outsider.

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