Iraq’s Supreme Court adjourns debate on dissolution of parliament to Thursday

Aug. 31 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The Supreme Court of Iraq has postponed to this Thursday the hearing in which it must determine if it is competent to request the dissolution of Parliament, in a context marked by pressure from supporters of the cleric Muqtada al Sadr to hold new elections.

The court has defended from the first moment that it is not competent to rule on the lawsuit for violating the separation of powers, but last week the pressure of the ‘Saderists’ began to grow, with sit-ins at the headquarters of the Judicial Council of Iraq .

Tensions increased on Monday after Al Sadr’s announcement that he was withdrawing from politics — more than 30 people died in the mobilizations in Baghdad’s Green Zone — and the Supreme Court was scheduled to examine this Wednesday the petition on the dissolution of the Parliament.

However, the session has been postponed in principle until this Thursday, according to the DPA news agency, so it is not ruled out that new mobilizations will take place based on the judicial pronouncement. Al Sadr has asked his followers for calm during these last two days.

The president of Iraq, Barham Salí, also proposed on Tuesday the holding of early parliamentary elections to overcome the current political crisis, marked by the inability of the different political actors to form a government ten months after the last elections.

The Iraqi Parliament has decreed three days of mourning as a gesture of tribute to those killed during the latest protests, according to Rudaw.

POLITICAL CRISIS IN IRAQ

Al Sadr’s bloc emerged as the winner of the October 2021 elections, but without a majority. His main rivals, a group of pro-Iranian formations focused on the so-called Coordination Framework, proposed a candidate for prime minister just a few weeks ago, but the cleric rejected him because of his ties to former prime minister Nuri al Maliki.

The Coordination Framework has rejected that Al Sadr’s entourage has requested the intervention of the Supreme Court, since it considers that the dissolution of Parliament falls exclusively on the legislative power itself.