BAGDAD (Reuters) -The Iraqi Federal Supreme Court on Tuesday terminated the tenure of parliament speaker Mohammed Halbousi, state media said, a decision with serious political implications that upends the career of Iraq’s most powerful Sunni Muslim politician.
The decision was related to a Federal Supreme Court “case” brought against Halbousi earlier this year, the report added, without elaborating.
Re-elected in 2022, Halbousi was serving his second term as speaker, a post he assumed in 2018 and which, under the sectarian power-sharing system installed after the 2003 U.S. invasion, is the highest office reserved for a Sunni Muslim.
Officials in Halbousi’s office could not immediately be reached for comment.
The court’s ruling is final and not subject to appeal.
Under the governing system in place since the post-Saddam Hussein constitution was adopted in 2005, the prime minister is a member of the Shi’ite Muslim majority, the speaker is a Sunni and the largely ceremonial role of president is held by a Kurd.
But the sensitive, sectarian governing formula has often come under heavy strain as a result of competing agendas and failed to prevent bloodshed.
Halbousi, an engineer from western Iraq, cultivated good relations with Shi’ites and Kurds who helped him gain the post of speaker.
Lawmakers had gathered for a regular parliamentary session and Halbousi was in the chamber at the time the decision was issued, independent Iraqi MP Amer al-Fayiz told Reuters.
Upon hearing news of the decision, Halbousi exited the chamber before declaring the session open, Fayiz said.
Deputy speaker Mohsen al-Mandalawi, a Shi’ite, takes over as interim speaker until a new speaker is elected.
Halbousi’s ouster comes just over a month before Iraq, one of the world’s youngest democracies, holds elections for provincial councils that last took place a decade ago.
(Reporting by Timour Azhari and Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
