July 15 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Iraqi cleric Muqtada al Sadr struck a blow on the table this Friday after summoning hundreds of thousands of supporters for the evening prayer this Friday in the streets of Baghdad, where he claimed to be the country’s leading political force and demanded the resumption of talks to form a government, stalled for months.
Sadr’s attempts to form a government have been blocked by a coalition of pro-Iranian parties and militias with whom the cleric refused in May to reach an alliance. Thus, he came to ask the independent parliamentarians to try to assemble the new Executive.
Pro-Iranian parties and their allies have been blocking parliamentary sessions to prevent the bloc led by Shiite cleric Sayirún and his allies from generating a majority bloc, effectively preventing the formation of an Executive that does not have their support.
Fed up with the situation, the speaker, Mahmoud Al Jiashi, has appealed to the crowd, on behalf of the cleric, for a breakthrough in the talks through the removal of corrupt elements from Iraqi politics. “The first step of repentance is to unhesitatingly hold corrupt members of it accountable,” according to the cleric’s speech, in a message addressed to his arch-rival, former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Likewise, Al Sadr has accused the militias of the Popular Mobilization Forces, associated with Iran, of poisoning the process. “Those forces must be reorganized and kept away from foreign interference because it is impossible to form a strong government while an uncontrolled weapon of such caliber exists here,” he warned.
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