BAGHDAD — Supporters of powerful Iraqi
cleric Moqtada Sadr penetrated Baghdad’s heavily fortified
Green Zone on
Saturday, occupying parliament with no immediate plan to leave.
اضافة اعلان
In a deepening political crisis, it is the second
time in days that Sadr supporters have forced their way in to the legislative
chamber, months after elections that failed to lead to formation of a
government.
“The demonstrators announce a sit-in until further
notice,”
Sadr’s movement said in a brief statement to journalists over the
WhatsApp messaging platform and carried by state news agency INA.
Supporters of Sadr, who once led a militia against
US and Iraqi government forces, oppose the recently announced candidacy of
Mohammed Al-Sudani, a pro-Iran bloc’s pick for prime minister.
Demonstrators waved Iraqi flags and pictures of the
cleric inside the legislature. They crowded the chamber where some sat at
lawmakers’ desks while others milled about, raising their mobile phones to film
the occupation.
They entered
after thousands of protesters had massed at the end of a bridge leading to the
Green Zone before dozens pulled down concrete barriers protecting it and ran
inside, an AFP photographer reported.
Security forces had fired tear gas near an entrance
to the district, home to foreign embassies and other government buildings as
well as parliament.
Some protesters on the bridge were injured and
carried off by their fellow demonstrators.
Sadr’s bloc emerged from elections in October as the
biggest parliamentary faction, but was still far short of a majority. Ten
months on, deadlock persists over the establishment of a new government.
The mercurial Sadr, long a player in the country’s
politics, has a devoted following of millions among the country’s majority
Shiite population.
His supporters oppose the candidacy of former
minister and ex-provincial governor Sudani, who is the pro-
Iran Coordination
Framework’s pick for premier.
The protests are the latest challenge for oil-rich
Iraq, which remains mired in a political and socioeconomic crisis despite
elevated global crude prices.
Saturday’s demonstration came after crowds of Sadr
supporters breached the Green Zone on Wednesday despite volleys of tear gas
fire from the police.
They left two hours later but only after Sadr told
them to.
‘Revolution’
On Saturday, security forces
shut off roads in the capital leading to the Green Zone with massive blocks of
concrete.
“We are here for a revolution,” said one protester,
Haydar Al-Lami.
“We don’t want the corrupt; we don’t want those who
have been in power to return. ... Since 2003, they have brought us only harm,”
he said, referring to the year when a
US-led invasion toppled dictator Saddam
Hussein.
By convention, the post of prime minister goes to a
leader from Iraq’s Shiite majority.
Sadr had initially supported the idea of a majority
government.
That would have sent his Shiite adversaries from the
Coordination Framework into opposition.
The Coordination Framework draws lawmakers from
former prime minister Nuri Al-Maliki’s party and the pro-Iran Fatah Alliance,
the political arm of the Shiite-led former paramilitary group Hashed Al-Shaabi.
But on June 12, Sadr’s 73 lawmakers quit in a move
seen as seeking to pressure his rivals to fast-track the formation of a
government.
Sixty-four new lawmakers were sworn in later that
month, making the pro-Iran bloc the largest in parliament.
That triggered the fury of Sadr’s supporters, who
according to a security source also ransacked the Baghdad office of Maliki’s
Dawa party on Friday night, as well as that of the Hima movement of Ammar
Al-Hakim which is a part of the Coordination Framework.
“We would have liked them to wait until the
government was formed to evaluate its performance, to give it a chance and to
challenge it if it is not,” Hakim said in a recent interview with BBC Arabic.
“The Sadrist movement has a problem with the idea
that the Coordination Framework will form a government,” he said.
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