Iraq: a constant search for a candidate for prime minister, and Thursday is a crucial date

The Iraqi News Agency stated that Hassan Al-Kaabi, the first deputy speaker of the House of Representatives, met heads and representatives of political blocs to discuss the draft law on elections to the House of Representatives.

Al-Kaabi had said that the major parliamentary bloc that might be assigned to form the next government includes alliances that agreed last year to name Adel Abdul-Mahdi as prime minister.

Member of the Legal Committee in Parliament Ammar Al-Shibli said in a statement to Al-Jazeera that the legislative elections bill was ready to be presented at Wednesday's session, to vote on it.

Al-Shibli added that there are two clauses in the law that were not agreed upon, namely the type of districts and the method of nomination, indicating that the committee's opinion went with the proposal that the governorate be a single electoral constituency, and the candidacy is 60% individual and for party lists 40%.

While a number of blocs demand that the vote be 100% individual, and that the districts be electoral districts.

Al-Shibli added that considering the districts electoral districts is difficult, and it needs a long time to solve the problems surrounding it, as a prelude to holding elections, at a time when the Iraqi street demands early elections as soon as possible.

A member of the Iraqi Council of Representatives on the Alliance of Parliamentary Wisdom Hassan Khallati said in a statement to the island that the choice of the largest number of parliamentary blocs is no longer the only problem for the Iraqi president to resolve the matter of nominating the next prime minister.

Khalati added that there is not yet an agreed candidate, and that the imminence of the end of the constitutional period increases the difficulty of the task for everyone.

Running a business
For his part, the head of the Iraqi caretaker government, Adel Abdul Mahdi, confirmed on Tuesday that his government will continue its work until the formation of a new one, in the absence of signs of easing the crisis that is sweeping the country.

A statement issued by Abdul Mahdi's government stated that the cabinet held its weekly session two days before the end of the constitutional deadline to assign a candidate to form the new government.

The statement quoted Abdul-Mahdi as saying that "the government continues its work until the formation of the next government."

Deep differences still exist between political forces and demonstrators over the next prime minister, with only two days remaining before the President of the Republic, Barham Saleh, to appoint a candidate within the constitutional deadline that ends Thursday.

And if one of them is not mandated to form a government, Iraq enters the stage of a constitutional vacuum, and the government will continue its work mostly like what happened in 2010 when the government of Nuri al-Maliki continued during his first term in business for months, despite the end of its constitutional work due to disputes over the most numerous parliamentary bloc .

The protesters forced the Mahdi government to resign in early December, and they insist on the departure and accountability of all political elites accused of corruption and waste of state funds, which have governed since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003.