The “obstructive third” battle rages in Iraq two days before the election of a president

[size=52]The “obstructive third” battle rages in Iraq two days before the election of a president[/size]

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Supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr perform Friday prayers in Sadr City, Baghdad, yesterday (AFP)

[size=45]At a time when the (blocking third) battle rages in Iraq, two days before the voting session for the position of the President of the Republic by the Iraqi parliament, Ammar al-Hakim, the leader of the Wisdom Movement and one of the leaders of the coordination framework, said that unity cannot be achieved if the largest component (in reference to the Shiites) is divided and conflicting. distracted Al-Hakim warned in a speech yesterday, on the occasion of the nineteenth anniversary of the killing of his uncle Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, three months after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003 with a car bomb in the city of Najaf, near the shrine of Imam Ali bin Abi Talib, of the “scattering” of the Shiite component in the next political stage. He called on the Kurdish and Sunni forces (in reference to the alliance of Parliament Speaker Muhammad al-Halbousi and the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, Massoud Barzani) not to "send wrong messages to the Shiites," adding that "Shiite blood is forbidden."
Addressing the leaders of the Shiite house, Al-Hakim stressed that “the unity of our word, the unification of our ranks, and the realization of our ambitions and goals must start from here, and from the largest social component in the country, in preparation for our unity at the level of the whole country. We cannot expect to achieve national unity if the largest component is scattered, scattered, scattered, quarreling, scattered, God forbid.” He continued, "I am addressing the honorable Kurdish and Sunni political parties in Iraq, and I appeal to them to work on what we have done together to save the country from the clutches of sedition, division and intersection towards stability, security and prosperity, and not to send wrong messages that hurt the feelings of their partners in the country from the sons of the largest social component, and I emphasize that There is no meaning for a narrow or broad national majority without producing a successful service government... that puts on its shoulders specific realistic priorities with clear time ceilings.”
Referring to what was said about the unification of the Sunni House by the will of regional countries, Al-Hakim called on “all brothers and friends to take a position of neutrality and understanding of the course of the internal dialogue and its outcomes, and not to manipulate the strategy of a united, strong Iraq at the expense of open, immediate and useless tactics.”
This speech is considered the fiercest for al-Hakim, especially since it comes two days before the decisive battle waged by the two Kurdish parties (the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union) to win the post of President of the Republic. It also comes at a time when the (blocking third) battle is raging, which became more clear after the Federal Court’s decision the day before yesterday (Thursday), that the quorum for electing the President of the Republic is achieved only by a two-thirds majority, even in the second round of electing the president, which required an absolute majority of the number of attendees. .
While this practice appears to be democratic on its surface, the birth of the “obstructive third” in Iraq, according to what observers and politicians see as imported from the Lebanese model, would paralyze both democratic and political life. In the event that the election of a President of the Republic does not take place from among both candidates (Hoshyar Zebari for the Democratic Party, or Barham Salih for the National Union), the country, due to the “blocking third,” will enter a constitutional vacuum. According to the constitutional track, at the time when the speaker of parliament was elected in the parliament session on 9-1-2022, the session for electing the president of the republic was set on 7-2-2022 as the constitutional deadline. Following the election of a president, he has, according to the constitution, a period of 15 days to assign the candidate of the major bloc to form a government. But the "blocking third", which would obstruct the election of any of the candidates due to the inability of any party to collect two-thirds of the votes, means crawling over the rest of the constitutional dates.
In an attempt by both parties to the conflict: the Triple Alliance, which includes (the Sadrist Movement, the Sunni Sovereignty Alliance, and the Kurdistan Democratic Party), and the opposite coalition, which includes (the Coordinating Framework Forces, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and groups of independents), to mobilize the largest number of representatives to ensure voting for one of the candidates in the second round . While the position of al-Sadr and his opponents remains the same despite the Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani’s renewal of his initiative aimed at reducing the gap between al-Sadr and some of the framework forces, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan led by Bafel Talabani is trying to woo the forces of the coordination framework in terms of supporting his candidate Barham Salih on the one hand, and on the other hand thwarting a quorum The voting session because of the decision of the Federal Court, which pushed towards the possibility of disrupting the voting session unless there is agreement to solve the outstanding problems between the political parties.[/size]
[size=45]Baghdad: «Asharq Al-Awsat»[/size]
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