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In a speech on August 3, Sadr asked his supporters to continue their sit-in inside the Iraqi parliament building and rejected calls for dialogue issued by Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi

August 05, 2022 by Peoples Dispatch

Muqtada al-Sadr. (Photo: Iraqi New Agency)

In a speech on Wednesday, August 3, Iraqi clecric Muqtada al-Sadr asked his supporters sitting inside the parliament building since last Saturday to continue their sit-in until the current parliament is dissolved and early elections are held.
In a televised speech that was delivered from his stronghold Najaf, Sadr rejected the calls for dialogue with the Coordination Framework and other parties as suggested by caretaker Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi and President Barham Salih earlier. Calls for dialogue had also been extended by most other parties in the parliament, including Coordination Framework’s ally al-Fatah.
Sadr claimed that his attempts for a dialogue had failed and “it has brought nothing to us and to the nation but only ruin and corruption,” Al-Jazeera reported. “I know the majority of the people are fed up with the whole ruling class, which also includes some affiliated with the Sadrist movement,” he said, claiming that all of the existing ruling class will “not exist anymore,” Rudaw reported.
Several political groups in Iraq welcomed Sadr’s speech on Wednesday and expressed their support for his calls for early elections. Former Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, now the head of the al-Nasr front in the parliament with four seats, called for reforms to the country’s political system.
Hadi al-Amiri, head of the al-Fateh alliance which is an ally of the Coordination Framework, also supported the call for fresh elections claiming that “previous elections were marred by a lot of suspicion and objections.”
The Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) had already supported the call for fresh elections in the country. The leaders of the Democratic Way, a broad coalition of parties including the ICP, called for peaceful reforms to the country’s political system in a press conference on August 2. Raid Fahmi, Iraqi politician and economist, in a tweet on Wednesday also supported the need for popular pressure to bring necessary political reforms.
The storming of the parliament building located in the high security Green Zone in capital Baghdad last week came after the nomination of Mohammad Shia al-Sudani as the new prime minister by Sadr’s rival, the Coordination Framework. Sadr had claimed that Sudani was corrupt and not acceptable as the prime ministerial candidate.
Elections in Iraq were held in October last year in which no party or coalition could win the necessary majority. The Sadrist movement won the largest number of seats (73), but all its MPs resigned last month on Sadr’s instructions after he failed to create a national majority government.
Sadr had proposed a national majority government as a partial way to address the demands of protesters who want a complete overhaul of the political system devised under the US led-occupation in 2004.
Protests against the political system and ruling elites in Iraq have been going on for years now. Protesters have accused the ruling elite of being inefficient and corrupt, surviving in power due to the sectarian quota or Muhasasa system. They have demanded an end to this quota system.
Sadr had claimed that a majority government, unlike the consensus based administration, would be more accountable to the people.

Online News EditorAugust 5, 2022 

 
Baghdad, Aug 5 (EFE).- Followers of Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada Al Sadr on Friday ended their occupation of the country’s parliament building, which they had held for six days, and camped in its surroundings with a new show of force to gather thousands of people for Friday prayers outside the building.
Baghdad Police Major Tahsin Al Murshidi told Efe that all of the Sadrists had left the parliament headquarters, located in the fortified Green Zone in the center of the capital, allowing the main entrance of the building to be sealed.
The protesters, who seized the hemicycle ahead of an imminent vote to elect a new president of the country by a pro-Iranian coalition that rivals Al-Sadr, are still camped out in tents in front of the parliament, Al Murshidi added.
One of the cleric’s collaborators and Shiite political leader, Amir al Rikabi, confirmed this to Efe, adding that the voluntary eviction, which had been ordered by Al Sadr himself, took place early in the afternoon and that the demonstrators will continue to be stationed around the Hemicycle until their demands are met.
Their demands, outlined by the leader of the movement in a televised speech on Tuesday, consist of the dissolution of the parliament that emerged from last October’s elections, new elections and a political, constitutional and electoral reform.
The transfer of the Sadrists’ protest from inside to outside the Parliament came after tens of thousands had gathered at noon in a nearby square for Friday prayers.
It was led by one of the leaders of the Sadrist movement, Muhammad al-Musawi, who in his sermon criticized the past government’s corruption, which he linked to the formation of consensus executives, with quotas of power for all parties, a system that Al Sadr tried to break in the last session of parliament.
After his Sadrist Bloc won the October elections with only 73 of the 329 seats in Parliament, he tried to establish alliances to form a majority government, but was unable to do so due to rival parties demanding a consensus executive. They boycotted the vote to elect the president, a step prior to the formation of the Cabinet of Ministers.
After the prayer, those gathered demonstrated with chants of “Yes to reform” and “No to corruption”.
Meanwhile, the Speaker of Parliament, Muhammad al-Halbousi, re-elected thanks to the votes of the armed alliance around the Sadrist Bloc, expressed on his Twitter account his support for Al Sadr’s request to hold early elections “to start a new democratic process under the roof of the constitution”.
On Thursday night, the Coordination Framework, a coalition of pro-Iranian parties with a majority in parliament after the resignation of the deputies of the rival Sadrist Bloc at the beginning of June, had also expressed its support for an early election but on the condition that there is a “national consensus”. EFE