Three Iraqi government ministers resign over house speaker's ouster

This article comes to us via Yahoo News.  Extensive rewrite enabled to avoid copyright concerns.  We hope Iraq's Supreme Court does not trigger a worse situation due to Iraq's Federal Court ruling.  The channel found the Speaker of Parliament to be not only effective but fair with all sides.   According to Halbousi's Taqaddom party, three government ministers will resign on Tuesday in protest of a ruling by Iraq's top court to terminate his tenure.

Defending the court decision as "blatantly unconstitutional" and "clearly political," the party vowed to boycott State Administration Coalition meetings and parliament sessions.

In a surprise decision, the Iraqi Federal Supreme Court upended the career of Iraq's most powerful Sunni Muslim politician.

The resignation of the country's planning, industry, and culture ministers also undermines the government of Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, who was elected one year ago with the backing of a coalition of Shi'ite Muslim parties and Sunni Muslim Arabs and Kurds.

Without elaboration, state media reported that the court decision was related to a case brought against Halbousi earlier this year by the Federal Supreme Court.

The decision was reportedly related to Halbousi's alleged forgery. Halbousi's office could not be reached for comment.

Under the sectarian power-sharing system established after the 2003 U.S. invasion, Halbousi was serving his second term as speaker, the highest office reserved for Sunnis.

According to the post-Saddam Hussein constitution adopted in 2005, the prime minister is a Shi'ite Muslim, the speaker is a Sunni, and the president is largely ceremonial.

Because of competing agendas, this sectarian formula has often been strained. It has divided the spoils of massive oil wealth between powerful factions without preventing bloodshed or providing basic services to the people.

After the invasion, he cultivated good relations with powerful Shi'ite and Kurdish factions, which helped his rise to power. Halbousi is a 42-year-old engineer from western Iraq who worked as a U.S. contractor after the invasion.

As a result of his attempts to form a government with their opponents after the 2021 parliamentary elections, he lost support within Iraq's ruling Shi'ite alliance, the Coordination Framework (CF).

Even though he eventually joined the CF, the damage was done, and he was viewed as untrustworthy and accumulating too much power for his efforts to rally Sunnis, who had been politically divided since 2003, into a unified front.

The narrative around Halbousi is that he rose too quickly and made a lot of enemies in the process," Renad Mansour, director of the Iraq Initiative at London's Chatham House think tank, said. Consequently, the central government has used legal mechanisms to punish him."

Mansour said that when Sunnis and Kurds are divided and fighting internal disputes, the ruling Shi'ite parties are in a better position.

Despite claims that Iraq's judicial system is heavily influenced by politics, top judges say it is independent.

Lawmaker Amer al-Fayiz told Reuters that Halbousi exited the chamber after the decision was announced during a regular parliamentary session.

Deputy speaker Mohsen al-Mandalawi, a Shi'ite, serves as interim speaker until a new speaker is elected.

Iraq, one of the world's newest democracies, will hold elections for provincial councils in just over a month.

You can read the first article on this series of events here:  Iraq's Supreme Court Terminates. Speaker of Parliament