| 22-1-2022 MESOP – AL MONITOR – Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court will decide on Jan. 25 whether the election of Mohammed al-Halbousi on Jan. 9 to return as Speaker of the Council of Representatives (or parliament) is valid. The speakership is held by a representative from the Sunni parties. Halbousi’s “Progress” party won 37 seats, second only to Iraqi populist Shiite Cleric Muqtada Sadr’s party winning 73 seats. Hassan Ali Ahmed has the background on the vote here.
The expectation is that Halbousi’s selection will stand and the process of government formation will resume. The parliament will then have about 20 days to choose a president from the Kurdish parties. Fifteen days after that, the president will designate a prime minister (a Shiite), appointed from the largest bloc, to form a government.
The current president, Barham Salih, has been nominated by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan Party; the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) has nominated former Finance and Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. The KDP has 31 seats in the new Iraqi parliament; the PUK has 18. The custom has been for the PUK to hold the Iraqi presidency and the KDP to hold the Kurdistan Region presidency; the current Kurdistan Region president is Nechirvan Barzani from the KDP.
So far the Iraqi government formation process has taken three months since elections on October 21, 2021. The previous timeframe from elections to government was five months in 2018, and eight months in 2010.
Pro-Iran militias increase attacks in capital…
In an escalation of violence many see as connected to the government formation process, Shiite armed groups close to Iran, and who are linked to parties which lost support in Iraq’s October elections, have launched attacks in Baghdad over the past week.
As Shelly Kittleson reports from the Iraqi capital, “two Kurdish-owned banks in Baghdad were targeted by attacks using explosives on Jan. 16 in which a woman and child were injured. Iran-linked armed groups had recently increased threats against and attacks on the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and those associated with it. The latest in a long string of attacks by these groups on Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone occurred on Jan. 13 and also injured an Iraqi woman and child.”
Ali Hashem has the inside story here at Amwaj on the visit to Iraq last week of Ismail Ghaani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force, in seeking to quell divisions among the disparate forces in the Iraqi “ |