Iraqi parliament fails to agree on new election date

The Iraqi parliament has failed to set a new date for elections and has also postponed its session until Saturday.

The session was attended by 200 out of 269 Members of Parliament (MP). As many as 149 MPs agreed to hold a secret vote to specify the election date. However, members belonging to the Iraqi Alliance rejected the result and demanded to recast the vote and to count the votes again.

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Other MPs said Parliament Speaker Salim al-Jabouri refused to cast the secret vote again and put the session on hold for 10 minutes to discuss the matter with bloc leaders.

Jabouri, however, could not manage consensus on the resumption of the session and the Iraqi Alliance MPs withdrew from the session resulting in lack of quorum.

Employees distribute election material during vote preparations at a polling station on April 27, 2014 in the capital Baghdad ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections in Iraq. (AFP)

Washington support

Meanwhile, news coming from Washington said it strongly supports holding of elections in Iraq on the scheduled date on May 12 and warned that postponing them will be a dangerous precedence that undermines the constitution and harms democratic development in Iraq in the long run.

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A statement by the American embassy said to achieve this aim, the US will help to guarantee counting the votes of the Iraqis, including refugees.

It added that the United States Agency for International Development will train local observers for the elections and supply the Independent High Electoral Commission in Iraq with six international advisors that specialize in elections.

This article is also available in Arabic.