Tuesday, September 21st 2010
National coalition discusses tonight its candidate for prime minister
Baghdad, Sept.21 (AKnews) - The Ahrar bloc led by Moqtada al-Sadr confirmed that the National coalition will hold a meeting on Tuesday night to agree on one candidate for the prime minister post among the candidates Adel Abdul-Mahdi and Nouri al-Maliki.
The leader of the bloc Nassar al-Rabie told AKnews the meetings will be intensive in the coming days in order to have a single candidate for the position, based on accordance, and on mechanisms as a last option.
Maliki's coalition demands to depend on voting mechanism within the National coalition to have a single candidate for the post of prime minister, which is something rejected by the National Coalition (NC), that believes that the adoption of voting principle will be the key for Maliki to be a prime minister for a second term
The State of Law (SLC) and Iraqi National Alliance (INA) formed a committee called "Wise Men Committee" made up of 14 members, which task is to set the mechanisms to choose a candidate for the NC, but it did not succeed due to the disagreement among its components, as well as its objection on Maliki the candidate of State of Law.
The Committee made a mechanism that the candidate has to gain 80% of the votes of the committee members that was dispensed and an alternative mechanism was proposed by State of law that includes the winning of the National Alliance candidate in the prime minister post if he gained (65%) of the votes of the Wise Men Committee at the rate of nine votes from the total number of the members which is 14.
If the National Coalition came up with a single candidate, than it will stay in force, it still falls short of the four seats needed to reach a majority to form the new government: because with the share of the two segments, the super bloc has only 159 deputies, , 89 for the SLC and 70 for the INA, which means that the balance would lean towards the Kurds, who hold 57 seats in the Parliament.ListenRead phonetically
The National Coalition named on Sept. 3 the current leader of the Iraqi Supreme Islamic Council, Adel Abdul Mahdi as its candidate for the government presidency, hoping to run in competition with Maliki, so that the coalition that brings together both blocs (National Coalition), would result in a single candidate.
To reach the largest bloc in the Parliament the State of law and the National Alliance announced their alliance on the 4th of last May, as they officially declared on the 10th of June their merger and formed the biggest bloc that will be assigned to form the government, in accordance with Article 76 of the Iraqi Constitution.
Although the National Alliance derived its legality from the interpretation of the Federal Court, but Iraqiya List described the interpretation as politically motivated and refused to deal with it. The list threatened to withdraw from the political process if the government formation was assigned to the National Coalition, specifically al-Maliki.
http://www.aknews.com/en/aknews/4/182870/
