\nBAGHDAD: Iraq\u2019s parliament held its first session on Monday since May elections but failed to elect a speaker as the two main rival blocs both insisted they had the largest number of seats to form a coalition government.<\/p>\n
\nMuqtada Al-Sadr, one of the most influential Iraqi clerics, whose Sairoon Alliance came first in the elections, said on Sunday he had secured 188 members for his coalition.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nA few hours later, Al-Sadr\u2019s arch rival, the former Iraqi prime minister Nuri Al-Maliki, and the head of an alliance of pro-Iranian parties, Hadi Al-Amiri, claimed they had managed to pull together a 145-seat coalition.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nRepresentatives from either side both requested to register their coalitions as the biggest one.<\/p>\n
\nThe biggest bloc has the exclusive right to form a government.<\/p>\n
\nThe race to form the biggest alliance has been ongoing since the preliminary results of the May election.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nThe first session of parliament was attended by the 297 newly-elected MPs, who swore the constitutional oath.<\/p>\n
\nShortly after, MPs loyal to Al-Amiri and Al-Maliki, as well as Kurdish MPs, pulled out of the session to block the quorum required to register the largest bloc.<\/p>\n
\nJamal Al-Assadi, a governmental legal expert, told Arab News that the two sides were disputing the technicalities of how they managed to secure their coalitions.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cAl-Sadr\u2019s team said that the signature of the heads of parties are enough to make the alliance and form the biggest bloc while Al-Maliki and Al-Amiri\u2019s team insist on having the signature of each member,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThe law says clearly that the signature of the heads of blocs are required to form the biggest bloc, but our guys have already ignored this in 2010 and 2014 and adopted the signatures of each of the deputies.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nMP Mohammed Zainni, who presided over the session, was forced to ask for the Federal Supreme Court of Iraq\u00a0to decide which of the two blocs will be declared the biggest. The session was suspended until the Federal Court responds.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Iraqi parliament fails to choose speaker as federal court to decide winning coalition BAGHDAD: Iraq\u2019s parliament held its first session on Monday since May elections but failed to elect a speaker as the two main rival blocs both insisted they had the largest number of seats to form a coalition government. Muqtada Al-Sadr, one of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":13750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}