Iraq’s new parliament paves the way to form a government and avoid delays

The new Iraqi Parliament held its first session this Monday since the November 11 elections, the sixth since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein more than twenty years ago, thus paving the way for the formation of a Government and avoiding further delays in the complicated democratic process of the Arab country. According to Iraqi official media, 292 of the 329 deputies who were elected in the November 11 elections attended the first session of Parliament, in which the Coordination Framework coalition, of which the outgoing Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al Sudani’s bloc is a part, won the majority of the seats in the chamber. The first session is chaired by the oldest deputy to manage the election of the new president and the two vice presidents of the Legislative Branch, who must be a Sunni, a Shia, and a Kurd, respectively.

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Once the three positions have been chosen, Parliament agrees on a date for a new session within 30 days of its first meeting so that the deputies of the different political blocs elect a new head of state, who must be a Kurd, in a system that is structured around parliamentary blocs that reflect the sectarian, ethnic and regional divisions of Iraq. Subsequently, the chosen president of the Republic asks the candidate of the largest political bloc in the chamber to form a new Government, in a process that may take several months due to the usual divergences between the alliances and political groups Sunni, Shia and Kurds. In total, the Iraqi Constitution sets a period of 155 days from the announcement of the results for the election process of the three presidencies – of Parliament, of the State and of the Government -, but it can be extended in case of disagreement between the political alliances on the figure of the prime minister. In the previous 2021 elections, which were won by the Sadrist Bloc of the influential and controversial Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who rivals the Coordination Framework and boycotted the November 11 elections, the process was complicated and lasted more than a year.

The November 11 elections were the sixth since the fall of dictator Saddam Hussein in April 2003 after the US-led invasion of Iraq, from which it was established that the head of state goes to the Kurds, the head of the Government to a Shiite and the head of Parliament to a Sunni Arab.