Al Sadr demands the president, the prime minister and the president of the Parliament to ask for elections in Iraq

The Iraqi Judiciary had rejected the cleric’s request to dissolve Parliament because it was outside its jurisdiction

Aug. 14 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The Shiite cleric and strong man of Iraq, Muqtada al Sadr, has filed a lawsuit this Sunday against the country’s president, Barham Salé; the prime minister, Mostafá al Kazemi, and the president of Parliament, Mohamed al Halbusi, to demand the dissolution of the chamber and force the Presidency to set a date for early parliamentary elections, as it has been demanding for days.

The lawsuit, protected according to the text in article 64 of the Iraqi Constitution, is the cleric’s response to the decision adopted hours earlier by the Supreme Judicial Council of Iraq, which had declared itself incompetent to comment on an initial request by the cleric to dissolve Parliament, call new elections and thus get Iraq out of the serious political crisis in which it has been plunged since the last elections, in which the religious bloc emerged as the winner.

Al Sadr’s victory at the expense of the country’s pro-Iranian formations represented in the so-called Coordination Framework has led to a blockade of government talks and days of protests in the capital that even culminated in the seizure of Parliament.

The lawsuit has been filed by the secretary general of the Sadrist Bloc, Nassar al Rabihi, reports Shafaq News.

The option of new elections has been gaining strength in recent days and even the president of the chamber, Al Halbusi, had been in favor of it, but the pro-Iranian opposition has dissociated itself from the initiative and the cleric had threatened a response immediate response to a possible rejection by the Council, as has finally happened, and which is now reflected in the request that you have just presented.

Although the Iraqi judicial council has not been able to admit Al Sadr’s request, it has nevertheless coincided with the cleric’s assessment of the bleak future that awaits the country if this crisis is not resolved, according to estimates by the president of the Iraqi Supreme Court, Faiq Zeidan.

“The Council agrees with Al Sadr’s negative diagnosis regarding the negative diagnosis of the political situation in the country and, in fact, the president of the council has shed light on these issues on many occasions,” according to the note collected by Shafaq.

However, and as was the case with a petition from civil organizations formulated in March of this year, “the Superior Council of the Judiciary does not have the power to dissolve the Council of Representatives.”

“There is no constitutional article,” the Judiciary points out, “that allows the council to intervene in the affairs of legislative or executive authorities in accordance with the principle of separation of powers stipulated in article 47 of the 2005 Iraqi Constitution.”

For this reason, the Council asks “the political forces to refrain from involving the judiciary in their disputes, given the neutral nature that it has between the parties.”

The last parliamentarians, of an anticipated nature, were called after the serious political crisis in which the country was plunged after the massive mobilizations registered in 2019, which forced the resignation of the Government and the approval of new electoral legislation.

The protests, which broke out in October 2019 and resulted in more than 550 deaths -according to the official balance provided in July 2020-, were a new sign of the population’s disenchantment with the political class in the face of numerous cases of corruption. , the poor state of public services and the prevailing economic crisis in Iraq.