{"id":41584,"date":"2019-11-15T16:24:38","date_gmt":"2019-11-15T16:24:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=41584"},"modified":"2019-11-15T16:24:38","modified_gmt":"2019-11-15T16:24:38","slug":"harvard-students-walk-out-of-israeli-ambassador-talk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=41584","title":{"rendered":"Harvard students walk out of Israeli ambassador talk"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nBAGHDAD: Iraq\u2019s most influential Shiite religious leader called Friday for a new election law that would restore public confidence in the system and give voters the opportunity to bring \u201cnew faces\u201d to power.
Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani emphasized support for the demonstrators in his weekly religious sermon, saying none of their demands have been met so far and that electoral reform should be a priority.
His comments came as protesters called for large protests to take place on Friday after one protester was killed and over 40 were wounded in renewed clashes overnight in central Baghdad.
At least 320 people have been killed and thousands have been wounded since the unrest began on Oct. 1, when protesters took to the streets in the tens of thousands outraged by what they said was widespread corruption, lack of job opportunities and poor basic services despite the country\u2019s oil wealth.
The latest clashes broke out late Thursday in Baghdad\u2019s Khilani Square, according to Iraqi medical and security officials who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. The violence erupted hours after demonstrators celebrated Iraq\u2019s 2-1 World Cup qualifier win over Iran.
Demonstrations have mostly been taking place in Baghdad\u2019s Tahrir and Khilani squares and the predominantly Shiite southern provinces, following tough measures by Iraqi security forces to calm down on protests.
The powerful cleric, who\u2019s opinion holds major sway over Iraqis, said a fair electoral law should give voters the ability to replace current political leaders with \u201cnew faces.\u201d
\u201cPassing a law that does not give such an opportunity to voters would be unacceptable and useless,\u201d he said in his weekly sermon Friday.
\u201cIf those in power think they can evade dealing with real reform by procrastination, they are mistaken,\u201d Al-Sistani said. \u201cWhat comes after the protests is not the same as before, so be careful,\u201d he warned.
He said corruption among the ruling elite has reached \u201cunbearable limits\u201d while large segments of the population are finding it increasingly impossible to have their basic needs met while top leaders \u201cshare the country\u2019s wealth among themselves and disregard each other\u2019s corruption.\u201d
\u201cPeople did not go out to demonstrations calling for reform in this unprecedented way, and do not continue to do so despite the heavy price and grave sacrifices it requires, except because they found no other way to revolt against the corruption which is getting worse day after day, and the rampant deterioration on all fronts,\u201d he said.
On Monday, Al-Sistani said he backed a roadmap by the UN mission in Iraq aimed at meeting the demands of the protesters, but expressed concern that political parties were not serious about carrying out the proposed reforms.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BAGHDAD: Iraq\u2019s most influential Shiite religious leader called Friday for a new election law that would restore public confidence in the system and give voters the opportunity to bring \u201cnew faces\u201d to power.Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani emphasized support for the demonstrators in his weekly religious sermon, saying none of their demands have been met so…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":41585,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41584","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\/41584","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=41584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}