Iraq’s parliament was unable to vote as scheduled for a president after it failed to have a quorum in order to hold the session. Some 126 lawmakers, most from Iran-backed political parties, failed to show up for the parliamentary session. It is seen as another slap in the face to nationalist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who received a plurality of seats in the parliament in elections in October and has formed alliances in order to create a majority bloc in the legislature. Sadr plans to form a government that would exclude the Iran-backed powers, he opposes all foreign influence in Iraq, including by the United. He supports for president, a mainly ceremonial position, Rebar Ahmed, a veteran Kurdish intelligence official and interior minister of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region.
A caretaker government is running the country until a new government is formed. The vote by parliament for president was postponed to Wednesday. Under a power-sharing system created to forestall sectarian conflict, Iraq’s president must be a Kurd, its prime minister a Shi’ite Muslim and its parliament speaker a Sunni Muslim.