Iraqi parliament postpones controversial session for replacing speaker

The Iraqi parliament on Saturday postponed its session to replace speaker until Monday to let the door opened for more talks among the parliament blocs amid deep differences over sacking the speaker as part of anti-corruption comprehensive reforms.

Around noon, a group of lawmakers, who sacked the speaker Salim al-Jubouri on Thursday, held a session chaired by the temporary speaker Adnan al-Janabi and decided to postpone the session until Monday at the request of Badr parliamentary bloc in order to hold more talks to end the split in the parliament over the sack of Salim al-Jubouri.

"The lawmakers, who participated in the sit-in protest, turned today's session into consultative one," said Haitham al-Jubouri, representative of the group of lawmakers who voted to sack Jubouri two days ago.

Razaq Mheibis, a legislator from Badr bloc told reporters that his bloc "rejects division in the parliament and had presented a plan to unify its members."

"We warn that such parliament division would lead to the collapse of the security and economic situation," Mheibis said.

Meanwhile, Salim al-Jubouri who rejected the decision of sacking him and his two deputies by Janabi's group, was also supposed to chair a parliament on Saturday, but he adjourned it indefinitely to give way for talks to solve the differences.

Amid the political row, Salim al-Jubouri issued a statement aired by local TV channels saying that he decided "to postpone the parliament sessions and to invite all the political blocs and those wise people who care for the political process to continue the dialogue in the coming days and come up with solutions to take the country out of the bottleneck."

Iraqi people are waiting for the parliament "to provide solutions not problems," the statement added.

On Thursday, a group of dissenting MPs held an emergency session of some 171 lawmakers headed by Adnan al-Janabi, an elder member attending the session, and sacked Jubouri and his two deputies Humam Hamoudi and Aram Sheikh Mohammed after they did not attend a proposed session.

Earlier, disagreement heated up between the parliament presidency panel and the lawmakers who were on sit-in protest inside the parliament. The sit-in lawmakers criticized Jubouri for the repeated delay of proposed vote new cabinet candidates as part of reforms suggested by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

Legislators from various parties were demanding an end to the quota system, created following the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to which Iraq's resources and control would be divided among the political parties representing Iraq's ethnic and sectarian factions.

In the past few weeks, powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and thousands of his followers gathered in downtown Baghdad, demanding Abadi to come up with substantial reforms, including a government reshuffle, better services and an end to corruption.

The reforms also need to address the country's economic crisis due to the sharp drop in global oil prices whilst security forces are fighting the Islamic State militants in the north and west of Iraq.

Source: XINHUA