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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Iraqi parliament on Wednesday failed to elect a new president of the republic for the second time in a week due to the lack of legal quorum after the pro-Iran Shiite parties boycotted the session, keeping the government formation process in the war-torn country in a stalemate.
The session to elect a president was delayed several hours in an attempt to meet the legal two-thirds quorum before the legislature eventually decided to adjourn the session indefinitely. However, the deadline to elect a new president is April 6 before the Iraqi political process falls into a constitutional gap.
While the Iraqi constitution gives a period of one month to the parliament to elect a new president once nominations are closed, it does not specify what happens in case the legislature fails to do so in the given period. A decision to reopen nominations shall only be permitted by the Iraqi Federal Supreme Court upon an official request from the parliament.
The adjournment of the session came after over a third of MPs boycotted the session.
Footages from Telegram channels affiliated with pro-Iran political parties showed leaders of the Coordination Framework and MPs gathering at the residence of Hadi al-Amiri, head of the Shiite Fatih Alliance, instead of attending the parliamentary session.
MPs of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Azm Alliance, New Generation Movement, and various independents also boycotted the session.
In an address to local media outlets, Amiri called on the tripartite alliance consisting of the Sadrist bloc, Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), and the Sunni Sovereignty Alliance to shift to dialogue in order to remove Iraq from the current political crisis.
“Our hearts are open and hands are extended to everyone in order to reach a solution for Iraq's problem,” Amiri said, adding that “there is a good opportunity in front of the tripartite alliance to shift to dialogue in order to solve the current crisis.”
Iraq held up the vote to elect a president for the third time since October’s early elections.
The parliament last met on Saturday to elect a president, but the session fell short of the legal quorum as only 202 MPs attended the meeting.
Former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law Coalition, a key component of the Coordination Framework, presented 126 signatures to the presidency of the parliament from MPs that had decided to boycott Saturday’s session, as per their media outlets.
According to media affiliated to the Coordination Framework, the number of MPs who boycotted the session on Wednesday had increased further.
The rise came as members of the Kurdish New Generation Movement decided to boycott the session following remarks from the party's leader Shaswar Abdulwahid.
“According to our 17-point agreement, at least some of the points of that agreement were supposed to be actualized in the days following the signing, especially decreasing the price of fuel and removing the heavy load that is troubling the people of the Kurdistan Region. Yet, those Iraqi parties have remained silent. If none of the points are actualized by Wednesday, do not attend the parliamentary session,” said Abdulwahid on Tuesday.
The primary candidates for the presidency are KDP’s Reber Ahmed, backed by the tripartite alliance, and PUK’s incumbent Barham Salih backed by the Coordination Framework.
While the political stalemate in Iraq is seen to be because of the PUK and the KDP disagreement on having a mutual candidate, Shiite parties are also broken into two with the Sadrists calling for a national majority government that would exclude the Coordination Framework, and the framework insisting on a consensus government, a system that Iraq has abided by for years following the US invasion of the country in 2003.
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