Iraq’s parliament elected on Thursday (10/13/2022) Kurdish Abdelatif Rashid, the former Minister of Water Resources, as the country’s new president, the position in which he replaced Barham Saleh, amid an urgent political crisis. Iraq’s acting Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kazemi reacted quickly after the election, congratulating Rashid on his new post, wishing him “success in his mission” and calling on “all political forces to cooperate and support him.”

Rashid, 78, was elected in the second round of voting in Parliament with 162 votes, out of the 329 seats that make up the chamber, while Saleh, who took office as president in October 2018, received 99 votes and another 8 votes were announced. invalid. In December 2010, Rashid was appointed Senior Advisor to the Presidency of the Republic, a position he has held to this day.

The Parliament Session, the fourth plenary session convened to elect a head of state after the previous three sessions failed due to lack of a quorum and other obstacles caused by deep differences between the main political groups, was attended by 269 deputies. Rashid established himself as a figure of consensus among Kurdish groups.

Government Formation

The politician, who studied in Britain, was an opponent of the Al Baath regime of dictator Saddam Hussein and close to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (UPK), one of the two main parties controlling Iraqi Kurdistan. According to the sectarian system established in Iraq after the fall of Hussein in 2003, the speaker of parliament must be a Sunni Muslim, the prime minister a Shia and the head of state a Kurdish.

Rashid immediately appointed Mohamed Shia al Sudani, 52, to form the government. Al Sudani, from the Coordination Framework, an alliance of Shiite parties sympathetic to Iran, will have the task of reconciling opposing factions in his sector and forming a government after a year of stagnation. Al Sudani promised to finish the work “as soon as possible.”

DZC (EFE, AFP)