The president of Iraq, Barham Salih, begins to lose patience with the proposals to prime minister which offers the one which is considered the main political group in the Parliament. Limited by constitutional mandate to submit to the approval of the House to the candidate of that block, Salih has threatened this Thursday with resignation before appointing someone who does not have popular support nor the rest of the matches. After three months of protests against the political system, the president interprets that the exit from the crisis requires a figure of consensus to guide the transition until they can organize new elections.

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countdown to Iraq to find a new prime minister Iraq's Parliament accepted the resignation of the prime minister after two months of protests

Salih has refused to designate the man chosen by Al Binaa, the bloc parliamentarian who heads Hadi al-Amari, the leader of the main militia shiite and considered to be the man of Iran in Iraq. This group, which claims the largest number of seats, has been proposed by the present governor of Basra, Asaad al-Edani, to replace Adel Abdelmahdi, who before the popular pressure, he resigned on the 1st of December. The president believes that The Edani are not going to placate the protests that not only ask for a technocrat independent for the position, but conclusively come to denounce the iranian interference in the politics of Iraq. However, the Constitution does not allow him to reject the candidate.

“Because of my desire to stop the bloodshed and keep the peace, and with all due respect to Asaad al-Edani, I refuse to propose,” says Salih in a letter sent to the Parliament. “In consequence, I put my position of president at the disposal of the deputies to that in your capacity as representatives of the people decide what they feel is appropriate,” he adds in a text of two pages, signed in red and dated this Thursday.

Salih, a kurd member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (puk), a party traditionally an ally of Iran, has taken gap with the political system that from three months ago, is challenged in the street. The reservation of the post of president to a kurd is the result of the cast as a sectarian power that is agreed to in 2003 after EE. UU. topple Saddam Hussein. According to sources in his office, Salih has traveled this Thursday to his home in Sulaimaniya in the autonomous region of Kurdistan, from where he later thinks to direct an address to the nation.

“this Is the first time in the history of modern Iraq that a president express his willingness to leave office. It is a historic moment”, she plays the activist and political analyst Azzam Alwash. In his opinion, “this is a call of attention to the political [reminding them] that the rules of the game have changed and that either evolve or have the days counted.” Much as, or more important, Alwash is convinced that “Salih has not made that decision without talking to Najaf”. Refers to the seat of spiritual authority from the shi'a (maryaiya), the grand ayatollah Ali Sistani, who has a great moral influence on iraqi politics and the current crisis has supported the demands of political renewal of the protesters.

at the time, the populist Muqtada al-Sadr, has expressed his support for the refusal of the president to name The Edani, a gesture that was expected before the fame of the governor of Basra. The Edani earned the antipathy of his neighbors last year when faced with a protest, got out of the official vehicle and confronted the protesters who complained about the lack of services in the second iraqi city. So the posters against his nomination not have been any surprise. From the ranks of sunni, Osama al Nujaifi, former vice president of Iraq and former president of the Parliament, has thanked Salih “his courageous historical position”, but has asked it to follow the front because the country needs you.

Give yourself the past 1 October, Iraq is living a wave of popular protests against the corruption and the sectarianism that driven by young people have been extended to all social sectors in Baghdad and in the south of the country, the regions inhabited by the shia majority, and that they have put the iranian influence in its sights. The repression of the same has left thousand of people dead and 25,000 wounded. Even more worrying, in recent weeks there have been several murders and scores of abductions of activists, which the UN attributed to “militias” eager to quell the protest movement.

“The militia have been given to understand that the country could fall into a civil war in the style of Yemen or Syria,” says Alwash in an exchange of messages. However, the activist discarded that possibility, as he is convinced that “it would be enough a word of Najaf, and the members of the militia would go home, while the leaders at the orders of Iran would have to go back into exile”.

Date Of Update: 26 December 2019, 17:00