US congratulates Halbousi on re-election as Speaker of Parliament

Mohamed al-Halbousi, leader of the Progress (Taqaddum) party. (Photo: AFP)
Mohamed al-Halbousi, leader of the Progress (Taqaddum) party. (Photo: AFP)

WASHINGTON DC (Kurdistan24) – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken congratulated Mohammed al-Halbousi in a phone call on Thursday on his re-election as Speaker of Iraq’s Council of Representatives (COR), according to a summary of their discussion, provided by State Department Spokesperson Ned Price. 

Blinken “expressed appreciation for the role that the COR plays in Iraq’s democratic process and its work to uphold Iraq’s national sovereignty,” Price said, as he explained that the two officials discussed “the formation of a new government that will address the urgent challenges” which Iraq faces. Blinken also “underlined US support for a stable, prosperous, democratic, and unified Iraq.”

It appears that the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), as the fourth largest party in the COR, is playing a significant role in the formation of the new Iraqi government in concert with the largest party, Muqtada al-Sadr’s Sairoon (Forward), as discussed below.

Moscow also congratulated Halbousi on Thursday, according to the Iraqi News Agency (INA). As INA reported, those congratulations came in the form of a telegram from Valentina Matvienko, President of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation (i.e., Russia’s Senate), as she called for “dialogue” between the Russian Senate and COR.

“We attach great importance to activating the parliamentary dialogue, which will undoubtedly make a tangible contribution to the development of bilateral relations and the strengthening of trade, economic, scientific, artistic and cultural ties between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Iraq,” Matvienko stated.

Halbousi heads the Progress (Taqaddum) Party, which won the second largest number of seats in the new parliament: 37. He was re-elected Speaker on Sunday. 

Read More: Mohamed al-Halbousi re-elected as Speaker of Iraq’s parliament

The Speaker’s position is reserved for a Sunni Arab. Halbousi is from Anbar Province, where he was governor before being elected to parliament in 2018. Before his political career, he was a businessman.

The 41-year old Halbousi received 200 votes from the 228 parliamentarians who participated in choosing the Speaker. The other candidate was the 73-year-old Mahmood al-Mashhadani, the oldest member of parliament. Mashadani had been Speaker from 2006-2008, but he received only 14 votes on Sunday. 

Before the vote, a brawl erupted between the Sadrists and six pro-Iranian parties that have constituted themselves as the “Coordination Framework.” They claimed they had won the most seats when, in fact, the pro-Iranian parties did poorly in the October elections.

Nonetheless, their challenge sparked a fight with the Sadrists, causing Mashadani to fall ill amid the chaos, and he was taken away to recover.

The session subsequently resumed with another parliamentarian in charge. The deputies from the Coordination Framework walked out, leading to Halbousi’s overwhelming victory. 

Two deputy speakers, one a Shi’ite Arab and the other a Kurd, were also named. The first deputy speaker is Hakim al-Zamili, a member of the Sadrist bloc, while the second deputy speaker is Shakhawan Abdullah of the KDP.

Following the vote, Masrour Barzani, Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), tweeted, “I spoke to Speaker @AlHaLboosii tonight to congratulate him on his re-election” and “look forward to continuing to work closely with him.”

“I also congratulate both new deputies Hakim al-Zamili and Shakhawan Abdullah,” Barzani’s tweet said.

Next Iraqi Government

After the Sadrists and Taqaddum, the third most successful party was Nouri al-Maliki’s State of Law (33 seats), followed by the KDP (31 seats).

The position of president is reserved for a Kurd. The competition will be between Hoshyar Zebari, head of the KDP’s foreign relations office before the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein, and, subsequently, Iraqi Foreign Minister (2005-14) and Finance Minister (2014-16), and Barham Salih of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK.) In the 1990s, Salih was the PUK’s representative in Washington and is currently Iraq’s president. Parliament elects the president and has until Feb. 8 to do so.

To a significant extent, as an informed source explained to Kurdistan 24, the next government will be determined by agreement, reached through intermediaries, between the most successful Shi’a party and the most successful Kurdish party—i.e., between Sadr, on the one hand, and the KRG’s Prime Minister and President, Masrour and Nechirvan Barzani, on the other.

He also noted that the KDP seems content with the choice of Halbousi as COR Speaker.

At the request of Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, there was extensive international monitoring of the 2021 Iraqi elections, above all by the United Nations, and the vote is considered among the fairest, if not the fairest, vote, in the 18 years since the ouster of Saddam’s regime.

At the same time, however, turnout was low. Some candidates, like Ayad Allawi, withdrew in advance, denouncing the elections as they did so, perhaps, in anticipation that they would not do well.