Will Iraq's Sunnis, Kurds support early elections?
Iraq’s Sunni and Kurdish forces are closely watching developments between the Sadrist movement and the Coordination Framework, so as to take a political position on whether to dissolve parliament and hold early elections.
No political party representatives attending the Aug. 17 national meeting at Cabinet headquarters in Baghdad — which was held at the invitation of Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi — objected to holding early elections in the coming months.
According to the meeting’s final statement, “The participants indicated that re-holding early elections is not an exception in the history of democracies when political crises hit a dead end. The national political forces will abide by the constitutional path for the elections.”
Iraq's latest political crisis started after the October 2021 election results were announced and escalated on June 12 after Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Sadrist bloc, which has 73 seats, resigned from parliament. Sadr made the call for early elections on Aug. 3.
Although other Shiite parties agreed to hold early elections, their disagreement with Sadr is focused on its mechanism for holding them. While the Sadrist movement demanded the dissolution of parliament without holding a new parliamentary session, the Coordination Framework — which consists of the Iran-aligned parties, some of which lost in the elections — would rather vote on this dissolution in parliament.
