The Iraqi Communist Party, Sadr’s main ally in the 2018 elections, withdrew from the early parliamentary elections of Iraq to provide another excuse for supporters of the delay.
One week after Sadr ousted Muqtada al-Sadr in early parliamentary elections on Saturday, August 2, the Iraqi Communist Party announced its withdrawal from the October 10 elections to provide a new excuse for supporters of not holding or delaying the election.
Al-Akhbar al-Iraq news website cited the resignations as a result of the weak social base of these political groups and their frustration with winning the necessary votes in the upcoming elections.
In this regard, one of the Iraqi Sunni political figures today (Tuesday) in a tweet, referring to the withdrawal of the Communist Party and Sadr and some groups affiliated with the October 2019 protests from the elections, called for reconsideration of the parliamentary elections It is coming on October 10th.
Zafer al-Ani, a member of the Salvation and Development Front led by Osama al-Nujaifi, said: “The boycott of the elections by the Communist Party, and before that by Sadr and an important part of the October protests, puts us in front of the responsibility of reviewing the elections and the level of public participation and health and providing the legal conditions for these elections.”
According to him, the goal of early parliamentary elections is change, but some are determined not to change and impose weapons and corruption.
“The security situation in Iraq is very fragile and he does not think that the next election will be rigged,” said Jenin Plaskhart, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Iraq.
The Baghdad-based Al-Madi newspaper, which is close to the protesters in October 2019, described Plaskhart’s prediction that fraud in the upcoming Iraqi elections was certain to be “terrible statements.”
“We will do our best with the Iraqi authorities to prevent fraud,” Plashart said.
Plaskhart has come under intense political attack over the past few days, accusing him of seeking to delay early parliamentary elections by interfering too much in Iraq’s internal affairs.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) in an official statement denied the allegations.
Earlier, Iyad Allawi, the leader of the Al-Wataniya coalition in the Iraqi parliament, said that “If the necessary conditions are not provided to ensure the integrity of the upcoming elections, Iraq will be faced with two options of delaying or boycotting the elections.”
He added in a tweet: Since the date of the early elections was set, we have emphasized the difficulty of holding it if the necessary conditions for the elections are not provided.
According to Allawi, “what is happening every day in Iraq, including assassinations, repressions and intimidation, shows the correctness of the view we have expressed.”
In this context, Khalid al-Askari, a political expert, recently told Al-Ittajah TV in Iraq that the early elections will not be held on October 10 and will be postponed to April 2022.
He added that the Iraqi parliament has made its dissolution conditional on the holding of elections on October 10, 2021, which means that if the elections are not held on this date, the parliament will continue to function legally until April next year, and therefore the elections are expected to be postponed to April 2022.
Legally, April 2022, the four-year term, the fourth term of the Iraqi parliamentary elections, which took place on May 12, 2018, will end.
Despite some withdrawals from political groups and some calls to delay or not hold elections on October 10, many large political groups continue to call for elections on time.
A number of these Iraqi political currents have been campaigning in this regard for the past few weeks, which, according to the media and observers, the start of this campaign three months before the elections, has led to the early elections of 2021, witnessing one of the the largest election campaign.