Parliament Speaker Crisis Looms.. Coordination Framework Agrees to Support Al-Mashhadani

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[size=52]Parliament Speaker Crisis Looms.. Coordination Framework Agrees to Support Al-Mashhadani[/size]

[size=45]The crisis of the Speaker of Parliament is still looming, as the position of the Speaker has not been decided yet since it has been vacant for about a year, while the Coordination Framework, which brings together the Shiite political forces, said that all the political forces affiliated with it agreed to support Mahmoud Al-Mashhadani for the Speaker of Parliament, revealing the date of the election session.
The leader in the framework, Ali Al-Fatlawi, said that “the Coordination Framework agreed during its last meeting to support the nomination of Mahmoud Al-Mashhadani for the Speaker of Parliament, with the consensus of all its political forces, and agreed to set a date for the election session on the 22nd or 23rd of this month.”
He explained that “the Sunni political forces are responsible for not electing the Speaker of Parliament over the past months due to the disagreement and conflict between them, and for this reason the Coordination Framework is determined to resolve this issue.”
Al-Fatlawi continued by saying that “if some Sunni parties boycott the election session, the Coordination Framework will pass the candidate it supports according to the parliamentary majority it possesses, and all the main political parties have been informed of this matter.”
The political forces have not been able to elect a new speaker of parliament since the membership of former Speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi was terminated in November 2023 due to disagreements.
The House of Representatives held several sessions to elect a new speaker, but none of them led to resolving the crisis, due to the insistence of the “Progress” parliamentary bloc, led by former Speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi, on the position as an entitlement to it, while the “Sovereignty” bloc, led by Khamis al-Khanjar and other Sunni blocs, believes that the position is an entitlement for the Sunni component and not for a party or bloc.
The Coordination Framework, which includes the Shiite forces with the exception of the Sadrist movement, had given the Sunni blocs a specific period to elect a new speaker of parliament, but that did not end the Sunni differences.
For her part, the representative of the National Contract bloc, Mahdia Abdul Hassan, called on the Sunni forces to decide on the position of the Speaker of Parliament.
Abdul Hassan said, “The Sunni component has not yet decided on choosing a consensus figure for the position of Speaker of Parliament.”
She added that “the candidate for the presidency of the parliament must be accepted by all parties, first and foremost the Sunni component,” noting that “the Sunni dispute is obstructing the election of a new speaker for the presidency of the parliament.
” Abdul Hassan pointed out that “there are draft laws and decisions that require the presence of a speaker of the parliament in person,” stressing “the need to expedite the decision on the position of the speaker of parliament in the coming few days.”
On October 6, a member of the United Anbar Alliance, Ahmed Abdul Dulaimi, revealed that MP Salem Al-Issawi had withdrawn from the race to become the speaker of the parliament, after the heads of the Sovereignty Alliance, Khamis Al-Khanjar and Al-Azm Alliance, Muthanna Al-Samarra’i, withdrew their support for him, paving the way for his competitor, Mahmoud Al-Mashhadani, to win the position.
Voting for the speaker of the parliament requires a quorum of half plus one of the number of parliament seats, which the Sunni forces do not have, as the number is 166 representatives, and the Progress Party, which has the majority of Sunni seats, only has about 35 seats.
Over the past ten months, the Iraqi parliament has failed five times in a row to resolve the issue, and the division between the political parties remained sharp in supporting one of the candidates for the position, namely Mahmoud Al-Mashhadani, the candidate of the Progress Party, and Salem Al-Issawi, the candidate of the “Sovereignty” Party, who obtained the majority of votes during the Iraqi parliament session on May 18.
The voting witnessed a fierce competition between MPs Salem Al-Issawi and Mahmoud Al-Mashhadani, as the former received 158 votes while the latter received 137 votes. MP Amer Abdul-Jabbar also received 3 votes, while invalid votes amounted to 13 votes. 311 MPs (out of a total of 329) cast their votes in the first round, which began at 4:00 pm Baghdad time.
However, the third round did not see the light of day due to a quarrel between the MPs that developed into a fistfight, as the MPs’ phones documented a verbal altercation and fistfight between MPs from the Progress Party and colleagues from other blocs over the election of a parliament speaker.
The political process in Iraq has been based on the fact that the parliament speaker is a Sunni, while the position of the president of the republic is an ceremonial position without executive powers for the Kurds, and the prime minister is for the Shiites.[/size]
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