Iraqi Shiite Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr Announces Full Withdrawal From Politics

Prominent Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr tweeted on Monday that he has decided to withdraw fully from politics. “I’ve decided not to meddle in political affairs. I therefore announce now my definitive retirement,” he said in his tweet. The announcement comes a month after his followers started a sit at the country’s parliament building, after Sadr first called for new elections since lawmakers have failed for nearly a year to form a new government. In June, all 73 representatives from the Sadrist Movement, the biggest winner in Iraq’s Oct. 10 elections, resigned from the Council of Representatives, Iraq’s parliament, at the bequest of Sadr, in order to allow the formation of a new government. Sadr wrote that the resignation was “a sacrifice from me for the sake of the homeland and the people to rid them of an unknown fate.” Continuing disputes among the Shiite parties over the past months have stood in the way of the formation of a new Iraqi government, as the 329-seat parliament has failed to elect a new president by the two-thirds majority required under the constitution. An elected president is needed to appoint the prime minister, who then serves as the head of the new government.