Parliament had been due to elect a speaker and two deputies during its first meeting on Sept 3, but failed to do so as lawmakers were unable to determine\u00a0which competing bloc<\/a>\u00a0had the most seats.<\/p>\n Halbousi\u2019s election marks the start of a 90-day process outlined in the constitution, designed to eventually lead to a new government.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lawmakers must next elect a new president and task the leader of the largest bloc to form a government as prime minister. But a dominant bloc has yet to emerge, against a backdrop of shifting political alliances.<\/p>\n Halbousi defeated former Defence Minister Khaled al-Obeidi, winning the position with 169 votes, according to Shi\u2019ite lawmaker Husham al-Suhail.\u00a0Iraq\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0parliament contains 329 seats.<\/p>\n Announcing the vote, the temporary leader of the assembly said Halbousi, 37, had become the youngest speaker of parliament in Iraq\u2019s history.<\/p>\n Before running in May\u2019s national election as a candidate on the Anbar Our Identity electoral list, Halbousi was the governor of Anbar province. He had previously served in Iraq\u2019s parliament, from 2014 to 2017.<\/p>\n Since Saddam Hussein was toppled in a 2003 U.S.-led invasion, power has been shared among Iraq\u2019s three largest ethnic-sectarian components. The prime minister has traditionally been a\u00a0Shi\u2019ite<\/a>\u00a0Arab, the speaker of parliament a\u00a0Sunni\u00a0<\/a>Arab and the president a\u00a0Kurd<\/a>.<\/p>\n Iraqis voted in May in their first parliamentary election since the defeat of\u00a0Islamic State\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0self-declared caliphate, but a contentious recount process delayed the announcement of final results until last month.<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.france24.com\/en\/20180915-iraq-parliament-elects-sunni-lawmaker-mohammed-al-halbousi-new-speaker-politics<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Iraq\u2019s parliament elected Sunni lawmaker Mohammed al-Halbousi as speaker on Saturday, marking an important step towards establishing a new government four months after an inconclusive national election. Parliament had been due to elect a speaker and two deputies during its first meeting on Sept 3, but failed to do so as lawmakers were unable to determine\u00a0which competing bloc\u00a0had the most… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/123"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1975"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1976,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975\/revisions\/1976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}ELECTION OF ‘RELATIVELY YOUNG’ AL-HALBOUSI ‘CAME AS SURPRISE TO MANY’, SAYS FRANCE 24’S SIMONA FOLTYN<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n