The Iraqi government suspends the working day in most of the institutions to calm the tension

July 31 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The Prime Minister of Iraq, Mostafá al Kazemi, has ordered the suspension this Sunday of the working day in most of the official institutions to calm the tension before the day of protests on Saturday that led to a new takeover of Parliament, the second this week, by supporters of the powerful cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

“The only exceptions to this order,” according to the statement collected by the official Iraqi news agency INA, “will take place in the security and health institutions, in which a 50% reduced working day will be applied.”

A total of 125 people, including 25 members of the Iraqi security forces, were injured on Saturday, the day the Iraqi capital Baghdad was paralyzed by protests by supporters of the cleric against the candidacy of pro-Iranian Shiite politician Mohamed al Sudani, rival of the religious, to the position of prime minister.

Practically the entire international community has called for calm in Iraq. In recent hours, the European Union and the United Nations have joined through their Secretary General, António Guterres, who has called for “immediate measures to reduce tension” and the formation of “an effective national government, through an inclusive dialogue and peaceful, that can promptly comply with the demands for reform.

Al Sadr, whose Sayirún coalition won the legislative elections last year, has spent months denouncing the inability of the rest of the political forces to form this new government, and has assured that the pro-Iranian group to which the candidate Al Sudani belongs, Marco de Coordinación, a large defeated in the elections, should not have a presence in the new Executive.

However, and after the resignation in June of the Sadrite parliamentary bloc due to the blockage in the negotiations, the pro-Iranian group decided to take a step forward and present the former Minister of Labor and Social Affairs as a candidate.

Iraq is already going through its longest period of government negotiations since the first elections held in 2005 under the auspices of the United States, a situation that has led both the population and the country’s political class to a state of permanent frustration and prevented the OPEC’s second largest oil producer to reap the corresponding benefits from rising crude prices.