Muthanna

- On May 11, the Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament, Muhammad al-Halbousi, raised the controversy in the Iraqi street during a session of Parliament;

Where he decided - after a quick vote - to deprive Representative Basem Khashan of interfering during the parliament's sessions for the first legislative term and prevent him from joining the committees except by submitting an official apology to the Presidency.

This position generated wide reactions towards Al-Halbousi, on the other hand, Khashan became a famous figure on social media, and Iraqis - through their social media pages - circulated the video clip in which Al-Halbousi appears to prevent the representative from speaking amid chaos and voices resounding in the parliament hall. .

Khashan says - to Al Jazeera Net - that what happened to him in the parliament session was a hasty decision by the Speaker of Parliament, in which he exceeded the limits of his position as Speaker of Parliament, noting that this issue is before the Federal Court.

Representative Khashan outside his office in a dialogue with citizens in Muthanna (Al-Jazeera Net)

Khashan clarified that he and Al-Halbousi did not have any controversy or verbal altercation before the aforementioned session, and he believed that during the session he was exercising his right to object to submitting his name to the legal committee for a second vote after he was excluded from it, indicating that he refused to be returned to it in an inappropriate manner. The vote was incomplete and the decision was taken exceptionally quickly with approval.

Khashan affirmed that he exercised his right as a deputy and within his powers and jurisdiction in Parliament, refusing to overstep and practice illegal procedures against him, depriving him of interventions in the parliament and expressing his opinion on various issues.

One day after the uproar that occurred following the exclusion of Khashan, hundreds of residents of Al-Muthanna Governorate - the city for which the representative won - marched in support of him, denouncing what happened to him in Parliament.

case file

Khashan asserts that he was able to file 400 lawsuits before the Court of Integrity related to corruption cases, some of which are related to the House of Representatives and others include files in the Ministries of Health and Education and other ministries, noting that these lawsuits came as a result of long efforts before entering Parliament.

Khashan adds that he is not looking for fame or provoking controversy, and everyone who says that should know that the court has ruled unconstitutional the texts that he has appealed against, and this is a great achievement and a point to be reckoned with for the Iraqi judiciary, as he described it.

And he insists - in his speech to Al-Jazeera Net - that he will continue his work to confront violations if they are in the House of Representatives, stressing that the issue is not related to a person, party or a particular point of view, but all of this is related to legal facts and access to them from this door.

One second is enough for the light to cover a distance of 300,000 km, so do not underestimate what can be achieved in fractions of a second, including the vote to prevent an elected representative from exercising his job and from expressing his opinion in the House of Representatives, in our hands, we, the representatives, neither in the hands of Zaid nor in the hands of Omar We will put an end to this flagrant violation of the Constitution.

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— Representative Basem Khashan (@BasimKhashan) May 13, 2022

It should be noted that Khashan filed the first lawsuit after the election of Al-Halbousi as Speaker of Parliament last January, stating that the election was in violation of the internal system and as a consequence the Federal Court announced the suspension of the work of the Presidency, and then indicated its position later on the decision and endorsed the validity of the election of the Presidency .

On May 15, the Federal Supreme Court decided to cancel the draft law on emergency support for food security and development, based on a lawsuit filed by Representative Basem Khashan, and as a result there were different reactions between the political parties, and there were wide popular reactions to this law, which It has not yet been agreed upon in light of an uncertain future for the budget for the current year.

A field visit to Khashan in Al-Muthanna Governorate (Al-Jazeera Net)

bus rally

Khashan began his political life in the opposition when he was a university student in the nineties of the last century during the previous regime, which forced him to flee outside Iraq and remained for several years in Rafha camp in Saudi Arabia with many opponents, after which he moved to the United States and obtained American citizenship.

He did not complete his studies at the English Language Department at the University of Baghdad because of his escape abroad, but he completed it in Britain, then obtained a bachelor’s degree in the field of engineering designs, and later obtained a bachelor’s degree in law from the University of Al-Muthanna in 2018, after which he began practicing the legal profession.

Khashan hails from an ancient family in the Muthanna Governorate. His brother is the sheikh of the Pan-Barakat clan in Muthanna and Iraq, and it is one of the most prominent clans known in the governorate.

Khashan returned to Iraq in 2012 and joined the protest movement, and his name emerged as a prominent civil activist in Muthanna.

He was nominated in the parliamentary elections that took place in May 2018 independently for the Saeroon bloc (the Sadrist movement), but he did not become a member of Parliament because of the quota system seats were calculated, and he was excluded, but he did not stop there;

Rather, he filed a lawsuit regarding his position in Parliament, and more than a year after the elections, he was able to win the decision in his favor to be a deputy in Parliament, but the Presidency of the Council did not approve of it.

Khashan remained suspended by winning the decision of being a deputy, and he continued to criticize the House of Representatives for obstructing it and not allowing it to take the oath and oath to be a deputy, until the October 2021 elections, when he ran again independently and also won 12,000 votes, the second highest candidate to receive the number of votes Al Muthanna Governorate.

Khashan entered into tense media squabbles with the Sadrist movement, and the two sides began exchanging a war of words. Khashan attacked al-Sadr's bloc and considered it a violation of the constitution, while the Sadrists demanded Khashan to present an official apology to al-Sadr because of his statements towards him, then the Khashan clan intervened on the line of the crisis with the Sadrist movement at the time. Defending him about the contradictions that occurred.