{"id":6247,"date":"2022-03-25T22:10:35","date_gmt":"2022-03-25T17:40:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/panahandenews.com\/end\/iraqelectioncrisis\/"},"modified":"2022-09-16T23:52:13","modified_gmt":"2022-09-16T19:22:13","slug":"iraqelectioncrisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/panahandenews.com\/en\/iraqelectioncrisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Iraq&#8217;s Al Sadr courts MPs  to form new government"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; color: #ff0000;\"><em>Months after national elections, the country has no government because of political wrangling.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\"><strong>The National News &#8211;<\/strong>Amid the political deadlock that has delayed the formation of Iraq\u2019s new government, Shiite populist cleric Moqtada Al Sadr is wooing independent politicians to join his coalition.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Despite emerging as the clear winner in the October 10 polls, with 73 seats in the 329-member Parliament, Mr Al Sadr&#8217;s efforts to form a government hit an impasse as his Iran-backed Shiite rivals continue to pose a challenge. Parties need 50 per cent plus one of the seats in parliament \u2014 \u06f1\u06f6\u06f5 seats \u2014 to form the government.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">He wants a national majority government formed by the winners, in a departure from the quota-based political system introduced after the 2003 US-led invasion to provide proportional government representation among Iraq\u2019s various ethno-sectarian groups.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">For that goal, he has teamed up with influential Kurds and Sunnis who attracted the most votes in their communities and has offered to limit the representation of pro-Iran parties who endured a major blow in the national elections.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Those parties, mainly Tehran-backed Shiite militias, wants a consensus government where they would gain or retain control of ministries.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">\u201cYes, the successive consensus governments didn\u2019t benefit Iraqis and Iraq, but it harmed it year after year,\u201d Mr Al Sadr said in a statement.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">\u201cAnd that we see that we must get out of the consensus bottleneck to the sphere of the majority and from sectarianism to sphere of the nationalism.\u201d That goal was not able to be achieved in the past, \u201cbut today there are independent lawmakers who love their country and are aware of the reasons behind the deteriorated situation in Iraq to this worrying and scary level,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Pro-reform October protests that overwhelmed central and southern Iraq paved the way for independent candidates to win seats in the legislative body after amending the country\u2019s elections law.That has encouraged activists to run individually or form political parties. The prominent activist party is Imtidad Movement, which won nine seats, while other independent and smaller parties make up the rest. They hold about 40 seats.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Mr Al Sadr, whose alliance with the Kurds and Sunnis has secured 163 seats, called on independent politicians to join them on Saturday\u2019s session scheduled to elect the President of the Republic.That session, according to the Federal Supreme Court, needs a two-thirds quorum, or 220 seats.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; color: #ff0000;\"><em>Months after national elections, the country has no government because of political wrangling.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6341,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middleeast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/panahandenews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/panahandenews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/panahandenews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panahandenews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panahandenews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6247"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/panahandenews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6344,"href":"https:\/\/panahandenews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6247\/revisions\/6344"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panahandenews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/panahandenews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panahandenews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panahandenews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}