By Haydar Hadi
BAGHDAD (AA) – Iraqi Parliament Speaker Salim al-Jabouri presided over a tense assembly session on Tuesday after some MPs had refused to allow him to chair any sessions for two weeks due to his failure to summon Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi to answer corruption allegations.
According to Iraqi state television, 176 lawmakers attended Tuesday’s session, along with al-Abadi who had planned to unveil a new cabinet lineup.
The prime minister, however, was forced to depart the chamber after a group of MPs protested his presence and demanded he leave, saying the session was “illegitimate”.
Al-Jabouri, for his part, failed to impose calm on the assembly and was forced — along with al-Abadi — to relocate the session from the main parliamentary chamber to an adjacent room, where lawmakers voted on the proposed cabinet lineup.
It remains unclear, however, what names were included in the PM’s proposed government lineup.
Meanwhile, thousands of supporters of prominent Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr staged demonstrations at the entrance of Baghdad’s heavily-fortified Green Zone to demand an end to widespread government corruption.
One group of protesters reportedly tried to enter the zone — which houses numerous government institutions and foreign diplomatic missions — by breaking down one of its gates.
Iraq has been embroiled in a deepening political crisis since March, when al-Sadr loyalists staged a series of protests outside the Green Zone to pressure al-Abadi to appoint a government of “technocrats” untainted by corruption or sectarian affiliations.
The crisis escalated further earlier this month when some MPs refused to allow al-Jabouri to chair a scheduled assembly session, accusing him of failing to summon al-Abadi to answer corruption allegations.
Iraq ranks 161st out of 168 countries on Transparency International’s “corruption perceptions index”.
In a related development Tuesday, Iraq’s Petroleum Ministry announced that al-Abadi had refused to accept the resignation of Petroleum Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi.
Iraq, which sits on one of the world’s largest oil reserves, is a major OPEC exporter.
