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Home » Chaotic scenes as Iraq’s new parliament holds first session

Chaotic scenes as Iraq’s new parliament holds first session

by Totori News

Iraq’s new parliament has held its first session nearly three months after Iraqis voted in a general election whose results have been contested by powerful Iran-backed factions.

In a reflection of the tensions, the meeting on Sunday was marked by disarray, with the eldest member and temporary speaker of parliament, 73-year-old Mahmoud al-Mashahadani, being evacuated to the hospital after falling ill.

The parliament’s media office did not give further details about Mashahadani’s condition except to say that his blood pressure was being checked.

The speaker selection process was disrupted as the competing political blocs claimed to hold a parliamentary majority.

Al Jazeera reporter Mahmoud Abdelwahed said a temporary speaker was appointed and the session resumed.

“It has been chaotic here,” he said, speaking from the media centre at the parliament.

“Only half an hour after the inaugural session of the newly elected parliament started, we heard heated arguments between the parliament members and then we heard that the temporary speaker of parliament Mahmoud was hospitalised,” Abdelwahed said.

The chaotic meeting ushers in what is likely to be a lengthy period of political wrangling among rival groups to choose a new president and a prime minister.

Parliament had been due to elect a speaker and two deputies during its first meeting.

By custom, Iraq’s parliamentary speaker is a Sunni, the prime minister is a Shia and the president a Kurd.

Parliament also has 30 days from the first session to elect the country’s new president, who will then ask the largest bloc in parliament to form a government.

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Pro-Iranian groups suffered significant losses in the early elections, which were brought forward in response to months-long street protests calling for reforms.

The results sparked street protests from supporters of the political parties which fared poorly in the parliamentary polls,

Last month, the Iraqi federal court approved the results of the October election and confirmed the victory of the influential Shia leader Moqtada al-Sadr.

Al-Sadr’s bloc secured 73 seats in the 329-strong parliament, according to the final results, and has the upper hand in choosing the new prime minister. But he will have to manage tensions with rival Shia groups who continue to reject the election results and are demanding to have a say in the government formation process.

That second-placed Sunni al-Taqdum (Progress) coalition won 37 seats.

Pro-Iran factions that alleged voter fraud lost about two-thirds of their seats – a significant blow.

Supporters of armed groups pitched tents and staged a sit-in around the capital’s so-called Green Zone, which houses the Iraqi government and many foreign diplomatic missions, for more than two months, while they appealed Iraq’s top court.

Zeidon Alkinani, an Iraqi political analyst, said the major obstacle to forming a government is the intra-Shia disagreement caused by the rift between al-Sadr and the Shia Coordination Framework consisting of pro-Iran groups such as former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s State of Law, the Fatah alliance and their allies.

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“The Sadrist movement is trying to create a majority government this time,” Alkinani told Al Jazeera.

“They believe they have the electoral confidence and power this time to create a majority government they would lead – a government that they would unilaterally dominate as the only political Shia player in such a majority government with their Kurdish and Sunni partners.”

On the other hand, he added, “the Shia Coordination Framework is using their influences within and beyond the government to ensure that a consensus government would include them, despite their electoral defeat”.

“The only clear agreement that we are witnessing right now is the agreement within the Sunni bloc that is mostly dominated by Taqdum,” he added.

On Sunday, parliamentarians from al-Sadr’s bloc walked into the assembly in the capital Baghdad wearing white sashes symbolising death shrouds, following the tradition of Mohammed al-Sadr, the late father of Moqtada, witnesses said.

Some independent lawmakers, meanwhile, reached the assembly riding tuk-tuks, or motorised rickshaws, from Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, the epicentre of anti-government protests that erupted in October 2019, the witnesses added.

Tuk-tuks were used to transport the injured during the violent demonstrations.

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