BAGHDAD (Al Jazeera) – Iraqi lawmakers from Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s bloc resigned on Sunday, the parliamentary speaker said, a move ostensibly designed to end eight months of political paralysis.
“We have reluctantly accepted the requests of our brothers and sisters, representatives of the al-Sadr bloc, to resign,” parliament’s speaker Mohammed al-Halboussi said on Twitter after receiving resignation letters from the lawmakers
Al-Sadr on Thursday urged the MPs from his bloc, the biggest in parliament, to ready resignation papers in a bid, he said, to break the parliamentary deadlock and create space for the establishment of a new government.
Sadrists exceeded their fellow aspirants by winning as many as 73 seats in the contest.
The seats are, however, not enough to give them a mandate to break the impasse. Sadr, himself, has said he would not team up with any other bloc to form an alliance that could throw its support behind a new prime minister.
Parliament in Baghdad has been in turmoil since October’s general election, and intense negotiations among political factions have failed to forge a majority in support of a new prime minister to succeed Mustafa al-Kadhimi.
Iraqi lawmakers have already exceeded all deadlines for setting up a new government set down in the constitution, prolonging the country’s political crisis.
Al-Sadr, who has positioned himself as a staunch opponent of the United States, said in a statement that his request to lawmakers to resign was “a sacrifice from me for the country and the people to rid them of the unknown destiny”.
“If the survival of the Sadrist bloc is an obstacle to the formation of the government, then all representatives of the bloc are ready to resign from parliament,” Sadr had said on Thursday in a televised statement.
Sadr has also ordered postponement of the operations of almost all of the institutions that are supervised by his movement.
It was not immediately clear how the resignation of the biggest bloc in parliament would play out.