The Parliament of Iraq elected MP Haibat al-Halbusi as Speaker of the House of Representatives this Monday, thus opening the way for the government formation process after the elections of last November 11, the Iraqi official news agency INA reported.
According to the official results of the vote in Parliament, Al Halbusi received 208 votes, and his rival, the Siyada alliance MP Salem al Issawi, obtained 66 votes, while the rest of the votes were distributed among the other candidates and blank ballots.
Following the vote, the Parliament’s Press Office stated that “the Parliament elected Al Halbusi as Speaker for its sixth term,” and the two vice-presidents were voted on.
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Al Halbusi is part of the Sunni liberal coalition Taqqadum (Progress), the largest political party of this branch of Islam in Iraq, which in the last elections obtained 36 seats and was positioned in second place.
The winning coalition was ‘Coordination Framework’, formed by the Reconstruction and Development party of the acting president, Mohamed Shia al Sudani, which obtained 46 of the 329 parliamentary seats, and also includes other pro-Iranian formations such as the Rule of Law coalition, of former Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki, with 27 seats, and the Badr Organization, with 21.
According to the Iraqi Constitution, in its first session, lawmakers must take a constitutional oath and elect a Speaker of the House. They then have a period of 30 days to appoint the next president of the republic.
This should commission, before the same period of time, the formation of the Government to the candidate proposed by the majority group in the Legislative for prime minister, who will have another 30 days to form his Cabinet and obtain the approval of Parliament.
According to the sectarian system established in Iraq after the fall of dictator Saddam Hussein, the Speaker of Parliament must be a Sunni Muslim, the Prime Minister a Shiite, and the head of state, a Kurd.
Al Halbusi was born in 1980 in Al Anbar province (in western Iraq) and holds a degree in Political Science.
He has experience in Parliament, having chaired the Parliamentary Committee on Oil and Energy for years, and then assumed the leadership of the Taqqadum parliamentary bloc in the last legislature.
In the last elections, he ran for office in Anbar province and received more than 51,000 votes, “which strengthened his political position and ultimately led to his election as Speaker of Parliament,” INA reported.
