A session was scheduled for Monday, but only 58 deputies out of 329 attended, according to the House of Representatives media department, which makes the election of a president mathematically impossible with such attendance.
The “Sky News Arabia” correspondent explained that “the session turned into a deliberative session,” while “there will be no vote to elect the president of the republic due to the lack of a quorum, which requires two-thirds of the number of parliamentarians.”
“There will be no vote to elect the president of the republic today,” MP Mishaan al-Jubouri, one of those who attended the parliament session, told AFP.
And “Sky News Arabia” obtained pictures showing a small number of deputies sitting in the first row of the parliament’s seats, behind them hundreds of empty seats.
Due to the lack of a quorum, the parliament deliberated some routine issues, especially with regard to the distribution of deputies within the parliamentary committees, and the deputy took the constitutional oath.
The leader of the Sadrist movement, Muqtada al-Sadr, who has the first power in parliament, announced on Saturday that his deputies will not participate in this session.
On Sunday evening, the Sovereignty Coalition, which consists of 51 deputies, led by Parliament Speaker Muhammad al-Halbousi, an ally of al-Sadr, announced the boycott, followed by the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the third ally, with 31 seats.
In the opposition political camp, the political framework, which includes pro-Iranian parties, expressed “the need not to hold the session,” highlighting “the obstruction of the political situation due to the chaos resulting from the recent elections.”
About 25 candidates are competing for the presidency, but two of them are veteran politicians, Hoshyar Zebari, a former minister from the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and the current president, Barham Salih, of the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
But Zebari’s candidacy was suspended “temporarily” on Sunday by the courts, after a complaint filed by deputies against the background of accusations of corruption.
