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AFP
Adel Abdul Mahdi (2nd L) and Barham Saleh (2nd R) left the House of Parliament together
Iraq's new president, Barham Saleh, has appointed Shiite Islamist politician Adel Abdul Mahdi as prime minister, putting an end to months of stalemate.
Saleh, a former Kurdish deputy prime minister, was elected Tuesday by MPs to an essentially ceremonial post.
Shortly after, he asked Mr. Abdul Mahdi, Vice President and Minister of Petroleum, to form a government.
The economist trained in France is the candidate of the two blocks led by the Shiites who won the most seats in the May elections.
He will oversee the reconstruction of Iraq after the four-year battle against the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group, which has destroyed and displaced tens of thousands of homes and businesses and displaced more than three million people.
How was the president chosen?
Under a de facto power-sharing agreement reached in Iraq after the US invasion in 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein, the speaker of parliament was still a Sunni Arab, the prime minister a Shiite Arab and the President a Kurd.
There were 20 presidential candidates, but it was actually a fight between the candidates of the two main parties of the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan – the Democratic Party of Kurdistan and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
Mr. Saleh was the choice of the PUK, while the KDP supported Fuad Hussein, long-time chief of staff of former Kurdistan region president Massoud Barzani.
Finally, Saleh garnered 219 votes cast by the 273 deputies present at Tuesday's session, according to President Mohammed al-Halbousi.
Saleh was reportedly the preferred candidate for deputies because of his perception of the Kurdistan region's independence, a year after the federal government and the judiciary rejected Barzani's referendum result in which residents overwhelmingly supported secession.
Who is Mr. Saleh?
Aged 58, he joined the UPK in 1976, while it was an underground organization, and fled Iraq four years later to the Kingdom. -United.
After studying PhD in statistics in the UK, he became the PUK spokesman in this country. He later served as a Kurdish emissary to the United States from 1991 to 2001, before returning to Kurdistan to lead a PUK-led government.
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AFP
Barham Saleh examined a guard of honor at a handover ceremony on Wednesday
Between 2004 and 2005, Mr. Saleh was one of the deputy prime ministers of the Iraqi interim government. He also held this position from 2006 to 2009. He was then prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government until 2012.
In 2017, he separated from the PUK after the death of its founder, Jalal Talabani, and formed a new Kurdish opposition party, the Coalition for Democracy and Justice. But last month, Saleh resigned from the CDJ and joined the PUK.
Why did he ask Mr. Abdul Mahdi to be Prime Minister?
Under the Iraqi constitution, Saleh had 15 days to invite the largest bloc's candidate to form a government. But he immediately tapped Mr. Abdul Mahdi.
He was the consensus candidate of the two Shia-led blocs, both claiming to be the most important in Parliament – one led by populist cleric Moqtada Sadr and outgoing Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, the other by the paramilitary leader backed by Iran, Hadi al. Amiri and former Prime Minister Nouri Maliki.
Mr Sadr welcomed the compromise by tweeting: "Iraq is bigger than the biggest bloc".
Who is Mr. Abdul Mahdi?
At age 76, he fled Iraq in the 1960s after being sentenced to death for his political activities and settled in France. He obtained a doctorate in economics, worked for think tanks and published magazines.
After flirting with Maoist politics, he joined the Iraqi Supreme Islamic Council – a powerful Shia Islamist organization closely linked to Iran.
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EPA
Mr. Abdul Mahdi has been an independent politician since last year.
He returned to Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam. As the finance minister of the interim government from 2004-2005, he persuaded international creditors to cancel the Iraqi debt.
Mr. Abdul Mahdi had been tipped to become prime minister after the 2005 elections, but he was instead chosen to be vice president – a post he held until 2011.
He also served for two years as Minister of Petroleum with Mr. Abadi. He resigned in 2016 in the midst of an "atmosphere of worry and chaos" caused by the decision to replace political members of the government with independent technocrats.
Mr. Abdul Mahdi was a member of SIIC until last year, when his leader, Ammar al-Hakim, left and created a new party called the National Movement of Wisdom.
