Baghdad– Iraq’s parliament voted on Saturday to elect Nizar Amidi, a political official from one of the country’s two main Kurdish parties, as president after five months in office. parliamentary elections This did not create any group with a decisive majority.
His election comes at a time when Iraq is grappling with the consequences of the US-Israel war on Iran. Iraq was caught in the middle of the conflict, with Iran-backed militias launching attacks on US bases and diplomatic facilities as well as critical energy infrastructure. Meanwhile, the US and Israel launched airstrikes targeting militias, some of which killed Iraqi army members.
The war and Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz also largely halted oil exports, on which Iraq’s economy depends.
Amidi, a member of the political bureau of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party, defeated a slate of candidates that also included Iraq’s current foreign minister, Fuad Hussein, the choice of the rival Kurdistan Democratic Party.
By tradition, the President of Iraq is always a Kurd, while the more powerful Prime Minister is a Shia and the Parliamentary Speaker is a Sunni.
The vote to elect the president took place more than two months ahead of the constitutional deadline, which requires a newly elected parliament to elect a president within 30 days after its first session.
Amidi, an engineer born in Dohuk province in northern Iraq, had previously worked as an aide to two other presidents, Jalal Talabani and Fouad Masoum.
No candidate achieved the required two-thirds majority in the first round of voting on Saturday, although Amidi was well ahead of the other 15 candidates, garnering 208 votes in the first round, while the other candidate – Kurdistan Islamic Union Bloc MP Muthanna Amin Nader – received 17 votes. As a result, the Parliament advanced to a second round, where the winner is determined by a simple plurality of votes.
In the second round, Amidi received 227 votes, while Nader received 15 votes.
According to the Iraqi Constitution, the President has 15 days to nominate the candidate from the largest parliamentary faction to form a government and assume the post of Prime Minister. The leading faction, the Shia Coordination Framework, a coalition of Iran-allied parties, announced in January that it would nominate former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki despite opposition from Washington.
The bloc must now decide whether to proceed with al-Maliki’s nomination or select another candidate. Current acting Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani was al-Maliki’s main rival for the nomination before clearing the way for him.
