BAGHDAD — Iraq’s powerful
Shiite Muslim
leader Moqtada Al-Sadr on Wednesday called on the judiciary to dissolve
parliament by the end of next week, urging his supporters to keep up a sit-in
outside the legislature.
اضافة اعلان
Iraq, which has been without a new government in the
wake of elections last October, has been facing a deepening political crisis
after Sadr’s supporters stormed parliament late last month.
They have since shifted their sit-in — held in
opposition to a rival Shiite bloc’s nomination for premier — to outside the
legislature in
Baghdad’s normally high-security Green Zone, home to government
and diplomatic buildings.
Sadr has demanded the dissolution of parliament and
early elections.
“Some may say that the dissolution of Parliament
requires a parliamentary session,” Sadr said in a statement on Twitter.
Preferring to stay in power and preserve
“corruption”, some blocs do not want to “give in to the people’s demand”, he
charged.
Addressing the “competent judicial authorities”,
Sadr called for the dissolution no later than “the end of next week”.
Doing so, he said, would allow the president “to set
the date for early elections, under conditions that we will announce later”.
Sadr justified his calls for judicial action by
noting that constitutional deadlines for appointing a new president and prime
minister have been missed following last year’s legislative elections.
Sadr’s Shiite rivals from the Coordination
Framework, a coalition of influential, pro-Iran factions, have conditionally
accepted the firebrand cleric’s call to dissolve parliament and hold new polls.
The Coordination Framework includes lawmakers from
the party of former prime minister
Nuri Al-Maliki, a longtime Sadr foe, and the
Hashed Al-Shaabi, a pro-Iran ex-paramilitary network now integrated into the
security forces.
Maliki earlier this week had called for
parliamentary sessions to resume in order to study a possible dissolution of
the body.
Under the constitution, a vote passed by an absolute
majority is required to dissolve parliament.
A vote can be requested by a third of lawmakers, or
by the prime minister with the president’s approval.
Later Wednesday, the Coordination Framework in a
statement referred to discussions with other parties to “accelerate the
designation of a candidate for president”.
It called on political forces to “continue
constructive dialogue” to find a solution to the crisis and to “form a
government capable of meeting the challenges ... in particular in the areas of
energy and water shortages”.
Alluding to the Sadrist camp without naming it, the
coalition called for “respecting judicial and legislative institutions” and
“not preventing them from exercising their constitutional functions”.
Sadr’s bloc emerged from the last elections as
parliament’s biggest, but still far short of a majority.
In June, his 73 lawmakers quit in a bid to break the
logjam.
On Wednesday, he also invited those MPs and his supporters
to take legal action to demand that parliament be dissolved.
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