Muqtada es-Sadr, the leader of the Sadr Movement in Iraq, announced that he withdrew from politics after months of protests by his supporters and decided to close all his political offices. “I declare that I have withdrawn completely,” Shiite religious and political leader Sadr said on social media on Monday.
Sadr’s decision to withdraw from politics was announced as his supporters have been protesting for months to dissolve parliament.
A CURRENT BAN HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED
Sadr supporters entered the Presidential Palace, a curfew was declared.
POLITICAL CRISIS IN IRAQ
Muqtada es-Sadr, the Shiite religious and political leader with the largest mass base in Iraq, was unable to form the government even though he won the election in October 2021, and then announced that he had resigned from politics by resigning his deputies in his group. The task of forming a government after Sadr had passed to its rival Coordination Framework.
Sadr supporters started protesting after the Coordination Framework announced that it had chosen former Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Mohammed Shia Sudani as its prime minister candidate.
Sadr’s loyalists have been holding sit-ins in the garden of the Parliament in the Green Zone in Baghdad for more than two weeks. The Assembly cannot convene because of the actions in question.
Sadr wants early elections with the constitution, judicial administration and regime change. Sadr’s rival, the Iran-backed Shiite Coordination Framework, opposes these demands, stating that this should be decided by the Parliament.
Supporters of the Shiite Coordination Framework continue their sit-ins at the Green Zone gate on the grounds of “protecting the state and the constitution”.
Sadr, leaving the calls of the Coordination Framework executives to “return to the table” unanswered, stated that he would not sit at the negotiation table with them again.