Iraqi parliament elects new president

BAGHDAD — The Iraqi Parliament on Saturday elected former environment minister Nizar Amedi as the country's new president, following a decisive voting session held in the capital Baghdad.

Parliament Speaker Haibet al-Halbousi officially announced Amedi as the winner after he secured 227 votes in the runoff vote. Following the announcement, the president-elect took the constitutional oath.

The pivotal session was attended by approximately 250 lawmakers from the 329-seat parliament, exceeding the constitutional quorum of 220 members required for the presidential election.

According to the televised session, Amedi, the candidate of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, led the first round with 208 votes, while his primary competitors, Muthanna Amin from the Kurdistan Islamic Union and current Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein, received 17 and 16 votes respectively.

The election moved to the second round between Amedi and Amin, as no candidate could secure a two-thirds majority in the initial ballot.

Amedi, head of the Political Bureau of the PUK in Baghdad, had previously held the post of Iraqi environment minister from 2022 to 2024 and acted as an adviser to former Iraqi presidents.

Under the Iraqi constitution, the newly elected president has 15 days to nominate the leader of the largest parliamentary bloc as the prime minister-designate. The nominee will then have 30 days to form a new cabinet and seek a confidence vote.

Amedi was sworn in to succeed Abdul Latif Rashid after winning a majority of lawmaker votes, according to a live broadcast on the official Al-Iraqiya channel.

Iraq held the parliamentary elections in November last year. The vote concludes a long period of political deadlock. The election of the new president had been stalled due to a lack of consensus between the major Kurdish parties and the failure to achieve the required twothirds parliamentary quorum in the previous attempts.

Under Iraq's post-2003 power-sharing system, the presidency is reserved for a Kurd, while the parliamentary speaker is a Sunni, and the prime minister is a Shiite.

Xinhua - Agencies