Iraqi Democracy Stumbles in 2nd Assembly Meeting

While the Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi left the assembly hall before the meeting, deputies accused their leaders, who had failed to complete government talks. Reporters, on the other hand, were removed from the hall. The assembly, which was planned to begin at 11:00 a.m., commence three hours late because the Shiite and Kurdish groups, who reached a decision that the speaker of the parliament should be Sunni, had waited for Sunni groups in parliament to reconcile on a candidate. Hussein Al-Sadr from Allawi’s Alliance made a speech at the assembly that was highly criticized by deputies due to the failure to obtain any results in the government formation studies. "Iraqi people went and voted, even putting their lives at risk. What will we say to them? What are the reasons for such a delay?" asked Sadr, while a Kurdish deputy, Berham Salih said, "It might be said that we are now experiencing a crisis."

The deputies’ harsh criticisms against Shiite and Kurdish leaders for their failure to form a government, even though it has been two months since the elections, has increased the tensions, which led Allawi to walking out of the assembly session. Following this, reporters reporting on the session were removed from the hall, and told that the remainder of the session would be held closed to the media.

After Sunni President Ghazi Al Yawar had refused a proposal for recommending him as the parliamentary speaker the other day (March 28), the assembly session was late to begin due to a failure in reaching a consensus on a particular candidate. In the session, deputies requested the voting to be postponed in order to allow parties to complete their negotiations with Sunnis and determine their candidates. In an announcement later, Hussein Al Sadr said that they gave extra time to Arab deputies to determine a candidate and the parliamentary speaker would be elected on Sunday. Al Sadr added: "We saw that there was only chaos today; therefore, we are giving them one last chance. We expect our Sunni Arab brothers to determine their candidate, otherwise, we will be voting on a single candidate on Sunday."