Iraq Finally Gets A New Prime Minister And President, More Than A Year After Election

More than a year after its general election, Iraq has finally elected a president and named a new prime minister.

Iraqis had gone to the polls to elect a new parliament, the Council of Representatives, on October 10, 2021. The new chamber should then have elected a president who, in turn, had 15 days to nominate a new prime minister to form a government. However, the process became entangled in political disputes and violence, with the country run by a caretaker administration.

On the anniversary of the election earlier this week, caretaker president Barham Salih had urged the country’s political establishment to end the deadlock and move forward. That wish was fulfilled on October 13, when a vote for the presidency finally went ahead.

More than 30 candidates had put themselves forward, but there were only a handful of serious contenders.

In the days leading up to the vote several groups in parliament including the Emtidad Movement, the New Generation Movement and the Ishraqat Kanoun bloc said they would boycott the vote, but their absence was not enough to prevent a vote. The number of MPs in the chamber more than crossed the threshold for a quorum.

The key breakthrough came when the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) said it would withdraw its own candidate Rebar Ahmed from the race and instead vote for Abdul Latif Rashid, who had been nominated by rival party the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

By convention, the position of president has been held by a Kurdish politician, usually the one proposed by the PUK. However, the KDP did far better than the PUK in last year’s general election, prompting it to try and push its own candidate.

In the end, Rashid won the vote by 162 to 99 votes over incumbent Barham Salih in the second, decisive round of voting. He took his oath of office straight away and named Mohammad Shiyaa Al-Sudani as prime minister.

Al-Sudani now has 30 days to form a new government, but is likely to move more quickly than that. He has said he will present his new team “as soon as possible”, according to the Iraqi News Agency.