Following ratified election results, Iraq’s Sunni and Shia blocs move toward selecting a speaker and prime minister, but a persistent deadlock between Kurdish parties over the presidency threatens the constitutional timeline.
With Sunni and Shia blocs in rough consensus over the parliament speaker and prime minister, Kurdish parties are yet to agree on their selection for president.
More than two months after Iraq’s parliamentary elections, the first indications of what its new government will look like are becoming apparent.
The process, which is outlined in the constitution, will require several coordinated steps, each requiring the country’s main ethno-sectarian blocs to put forward a chosen representative for a key position.
If this does not happen as planned, the whole process will be thrown off, as happened last cycle, when it took a year to form the government.
The Sunni and Shia blocs seem poised to move decisively forward with their picks for parliament speaker and prime minister, respectively. However, fears are growing that the two main Kurdish parties will be unable to agree on a selection for president.
This is not like “the inertia that followed the previous elections,” Shivan Fazil, a doctoral candidate at Boston University, told The New Arab.
“Above all, the purpose of the Coordination Framework is to foreclose opportunities for cross-sectarian jockeying and the Kurdish and Sunni blocs from negotiating with…Sudani separately,” he added.
On 14 December, the Federal Supreme Court ratified the results of the 11 November election, which saw incumbent Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani’s list win the most seats with 45. This total is far from sufficient to form a government alone, with many other parties winning seats in the 325-seat legislature.
Speaker Selection Deadline
The next step is for the parliament, formally known as the Council of Representatives, to select a speaker. Since 2005, a Sunni has held this post as part of Iraq’s informal but well-entrenched ethno-sectarian balancing arrangement. According to the constitution, it has fifteen days from the Court’s ratification of the election results to do so, creating a deadline of 29 December.
The SCF’s quick movement has given “the Sunni blocs momentum to form their own ‘coordination framework,’” Fazil argued, explaining that the Sunnis appear poised to name their candidate before the deadline.
According to media reports, a number of candidates have emerged, including former speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi, Mahmoud al-Samarrai, former education minister Mohammed Tamim, defence minister Thabet al-Abbasi, and current MPs Salem al-Issawi and Mahmoud Al-Qaisi.
Given that Halbousi’s Taqqadum party won the most seats within the Sunni bloc in the election, he will likely have the greatest say in these discussions.
Presidential Impasse
Once parliament selects a speaker, MPs have thirty days to appoint a president, who has traditionally been a Kurd from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). This partisan allocation is part of an intra-Kurdish deal where the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) gets the two most powerful positions within the devolved regional government in Erbil.
However, the KDP has sought the Iraqi presidency for itself in recent cycles in an attempt to translate its political ascendency over the PUK into greater institutional power.
In 2021, the KDP initially nominated Hoshyar Zeabri, a close confidant of party leader Masoud Barzani. However, opposition from the PUK, which renominated Barham Salih, and Zebari’s 2016 removal as finance minister for corruption, sunk his nomination.
The party eventually replaced him with Rebar Ahmed, a low-profile figure who is a close ally of Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Prime Minister Masrour Barzani.
The impasse held up the process sufficiently to allow members of the SCF to get organised and sink a tripartite alliance between the Sadrists, the KDP, and Halbousi that had appeared ready to form a government.
Eventually, negotiators reached a compromise where the KDP dropped its own candidate, and the PUK instead nominated Latif Rashid, who is party leader Bafel Talabani’s uncle. This division and delay on the part of the Kurds affected the subsequent thinking of some in Baghdad, Fazil argued.
“The legacy of the 2021 process has manifested itself over the last few years in concerted efforts by certain parties to shrink Kurdish autonomy by squeezing the KRG,” he said. “Disagreements between the PUK and the KDP provided these forces with an opening to capitalise on that.”
PUK Candidate Question
It is unlikely that the PUK will renominate Rashid, who has no legacy to speak of from his time in office, but it is not clear who the PUK may select. Sources told The New Arab that the decision is being kept quite close to the chest by the party leadership.
Rumours over the summer suggested that Bafel Talabani might be the choice, though this was widely ridiculed and seems to no longer be in play.
A more realistic pick might be the current federal justice minister, Khalid Shwani. Born in Kirkuk and relatively young at 50 years old, he is a trained lawyer and a long-time member of parliament. As a result, he is a known quantity in Baghdad and has the confidence of the PUK leadership, which other potential candidates like Nizar Amedi do not.
However, it is not clear whether Shwani or any other PUK selection will be acceptable to Masoud Barzani and the KDP, which could run its own candidate again.
“I won’t be surprised if it will. It seems to be positioning itself to have a say at the very least about who gets to represent the Kurds in Baghdad,” Fazil said.
The KDP and the PUK are feeling significant pressure from the Shia and Sunni blocs and the international community to put their differences aside and unify around a presidential choice. That nominee will need the votes of 220 MPs to take office.
Prime Minister Stakes
As Iraq’s largest ethno-sectarian bloc, the Shia have always supplied the prime minister, who is the most powerful position in the government. Once elected, a president will indicate the largest bloc in parliament and give that grouping fifteen days to select nominees for prime minister and a slate of cabinet ministers.
On 17 November, the members of the SCF declared that collectively they would take the first shot at forming a government. Together, they have around 165 seats and, barring any defections, would not need the support of additional MPs to clear the simple majority needed to appoint a prime minister.
The major question in the immediate aftermath of the election was whether Sudani had done enough to secure a new term as prime minister, to become the first to do so since Nouri al-Maliki in 2010.
However, this seems to be less and less likely, with two notable missteps that harmed his standing. First, in unprompted remarks ahead of a cabinet meeting, US President Donald Trump revealed that Sudani had nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize, which had not been revealed before.
Second, Iraq appeared to designate both Lebanese Hezbollah and the Houthis as terrorist groups, which the government quickly disavowed as a mistake. Both developments angered Shia parties with close ties to Iran and embarrassed Sudani.
“Sudani’s odds do not seem to be high, despite the strong showing of his coalition in the elections. [The new prime minister] is likely going to be a member from the establishment that does not have a reform agenda,” Fazil said.
US Pressure Factor
The US has made it clear that it opposes the participation of Iran-backed militias in the next government. On 11 December, US Special Envoy to Iraq Mark Savaya tweeted that “no nation can succeed while armed groups compete with the state and undermine its authority”.
However, it is not clear whether the SCF will heed such warnings, or if that would even be possible in the context of Iraq’s domestic politics.
Iraq has ignored the government formation timeline mandated in the constitution on numerous occasions, and there is no mechanism to decisively force negotiators’ hands. Usually, the process simply plays out until conditions are ripe and the right pieces fall into place.
This time it seems to be moving quickly, but several potential hurdles must be cleared in the next few weeks if the process is to stay on track.