BAGHDAD (AP) — An influential Shiite cleric in Iraq whose supporters stormed Baghdad’s parliament earlier this month and have since staged a sit-in outside the building, stepped up his demands Wednesday and risked a veiled resurgent in the violence.
The cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, said on Twitter that the judiciary had a week to dissolve the legislature. Al-Sadr already has for the dissolution of parliament and early elections, but this time he has set a deadline.
Experts are divided on whether al-Sadr has a legal basis for his claims. He won the largest share of seats in last October’s election but failed to form a majority government for his Iran-aligned rivals.
Al-Sadr called his followers “revolutionaries” and said they would “take another position” if their demands were not met, hinting that he could intensify the protest.
The judiciary has stated in the past that it does not have the constitutional right to dissolve parliament and that only lawmakers can vote to dissolve the legislature. Given that parliament has passed the constitutional deadline to form a government after the October elections, what will happen?next is not clear.
Al-Sadr’s political rivals within the Coordination Framework, an alliance of Iranian-backed parties, previously said parliament would meet to dissolve.
Last week, thousands of al-Sadr supporters stormed the heavily fortified green zone, which houses the Iraqi parliament, government buildings and foreign embassies. They invaded and occupied parliament, after which all sessions of the meeting were cancelled until further notice. halted efforts through the coordination framework to try to shape the next government after al-Sadr’s failure.
Iraq’s political stalemate, now in its tenth month, is the country’s longest since the U. S. -led invasion in 2003 restored political order.
During his seizure of parliament, al-Sadr’s supporters failed to invade the nearby construction of the Judicial Council, an act that constitutes a coup d’état for many because the judiciary is the country’s highest judicial authority.