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Six months after the early legislative elections of October 2021, Iraqi deputies are called upon to elect the President of the Republic on Saturday. A first attempt had taken place at the beginning of February and had failed due to calls for a boycott. This new trial could suffer the same fate.
Will the second be the right one? Iraqi deputies are called upon to elect a President of the Republic on Saturday March 26, six weeks after a first unsuccessful attempt. However, with multiple calls for a boycott, the vote could prove just as futile as the first.
Six months after the early legislative elections of October 2021, Iraq still does not know the name of its new president, nor that of its Prime Minister, the keystone of the executive. However, the appointment of the second is conditional on the election of the first.
Clearly: parliamentarians must first elect the Head of State so that he in turn appoints the Head of Government, a post which is subject to endless negotiations between parties.
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Two-thirds of the votes required for the election
Saturday’s ballot could experience the same fate as that of February 7 due, there too, to calls for a boycott, in particular from a pro-Iran Shiite bloc which says it can mobilize a total of 131 elected officials. And even if the election takes place, it will highlight the ultra-polarization of Iraqi political life.
Among the 40 candidates in the running for this election which must take place from 11:00 a.m. (08:00 GMT), two stand out: the outgoing Barham Saleh, President of Iraq since 2018 and from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), and Rebar Ahmed of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). The winning candidate must obtain at least two-thirds of the votes.
Since the first multi-party elections in 2005, held after the 2003 US invasion that overthrew Saddam Hussein, the presidency – a largely ceremonial post – has traditionally gone to a PUK Kurd. In exchange, the PDK is at the head of the Kurdish regional government in Erbil.
A first attempt ended in failure on February 7, the vote could not be organized for lack of quorum. At least two thirds of the deputies (220 out of 329) must be present, but that day the most important parties had observed a boycott of the meeting.
They intended to give themselves more time after one of the favourites, Hoshyar Zebari, a former minister from the KDP, was deprived of election after being overtaken by corruption scandals.
Moqtada al-Sadr wants to impose his candidates and breaks with tradition
On the one hand, the turbulent but unavoidable Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr, big winner of the October 2021 legislative elections, has shaped a three-party coalition with Sunni parties and the Kurdish PDK. It brings together a total of 155 elected officials. On the other, the Coordination Framework, an alloy of pro-Iran Shiite formations, has around a hundred deputies and calls for a boycott of Saturday’s session.
On Wednesday, the alliance around Moqtada al-Sadr, dubbed “Rescue of the Fatherland”, expressed its support for Rebar Ahmed for the presidency. Anticipating what will happen next, Moqtada al-Sadr then wants to entrust the post of Prime Minister to his cousin and brother-in-law Jaafar al-Sadr, the current Iraqi ambassador to London.
But the whole issue is whether the call for a boycott launched by the Coordination Framework will be followed.
According to parliamentary sources at AFP, 131 elected officials could follow this call and observe the empty chair policy. In this case, the quorum would be far from being reached, the election once again postponed and the political calendar still blocked.
The Coordination Framework intends by its call for a boycott to protest against the “majority government” that Moqtada al-Sadr calls for. The Cadre as well as the former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki want them to continue the Iraqi tradition of the government of consensus around all the Shiite parties.
For political scientist Ihsan al-Shammari, even if the quorum is reached, the election of the president “will not be decided on Saturday in the first round”. A second round is therefore possible, according to him. In this case, only the candidate with the most votes in the first round will compete. To be elected, he must obtain at least two-thirds of the votes.
With AFP