Iraqi Parliament Elects Moderate Sunni Speaker

Written by : Mohamed Abdel Fattah

 Jul 15, 2014


 The Iraqi parliament named moderate Islamist Sunni politician Salim al-Jabouri as new speaker on Tuesday, state television reported,

The move came as Iraq's army and allied Shi'ite militia launched an assault to retake the executed former dictator Saddam Hussein's home city Tikrit an effort to flush out the remaining Sunni militants in that city, which lies 95 miles north of Baghdad.

In the vote, the lawmakers elected Salim al-Jubouri, a member of the main Sunni bloc in Parliament, with 194 of the 277 legislators supporting his candidacy.

According to the constitution, parliament now has 30 days from the time it elected its speaker to pick a new president, and another 15 days to elect a prime minister.

Under Iraq's governing system in place since the post-Saddam Hussein constitution was adopted in 2005, the prime minister is a member of the Shi'ite majority, the speaker a Sunni and the largely ceremonial president a Kurd.

The other two posts are the presidency and the prime minister. There was no immediate indication whether the agreement on Jabouri as speaker was part of a wider deal to break the deadlock over Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's ambitions for a third term.

Sources

alarabiya

.nytimes.com

Reuters.

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