ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Negotiations for the post of Iraq’s next prime minister are heating up nearly a month after the election.
Inside Baghdad’s Green Zone, discussions over the post have centered within the ruling Shiite Coordination Framework, an umbrella group of most of Iraq’s Shiite parties. Former prime minister and leader of the Islamic Dawa Party Nouri al-Maliki has positioned himself as a leading contender, following an early visit to Erbil where he met Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) leader Masoud Barzani.
At Dawa headquarters, Maliki’s adviser Abbas al-Musawi told Rudaw’s Hevidar Ahmed that his party believes the next prime minister “requires a personality like Maliki who possesses vision and wisdom.”
“Maliki is one of those mountainous figures who does not submit to pressure,” he said, adding that the majority within the Coordination Framework supports his nomination.
Maliki’s main rival appears to be the incumbent, Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani, but Musawi said Sudani’s experience “was not reassuring for most of the Iraqi people,” citing financial concerns and debt.
Iraq held its parliamentary elections on November 11. Sudani’s Reconstruction and Development Coalition (RDC) emerged as the frontrunner with 46 seats in the 329-member parliament. Maliki’s coalition, the State of Law, won 29 seats, and the KDP took 26.
Maliki is not the only Shiite figure to visit Erbil during the negotiations. Rudaw has learned that intelligence chief Hamid al-Shatri and leader of Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) Falih al-Fayyadh also visited the Kurdish capital.
Senior KDP official Hoshyar Zebari confirmed the visits. “Our door is constantly open,” Zebari said, adding that political engagements “will get even hotter.”
He predicted that forming the next government will be a challenge as there are differing positions within the Shiite parties, but said that the KDP will not offer unconditional support: “We do not sign a blank paper for anyone… It will be with rights and calculations.”
The KDP insists on its constitutional and political rights, he said.
On Baghdad’s famed literary al-Mutanabbi Street, Iraqis debated the characteristics the next prime minister should have.
The leader of the country must simply be “a good human being,” said writer Ali Allaq.
Khalid Sufi, another writer, said the future prime minister “should be civil and secular” and committed to “building the state.”
Karim Baghdadi, an engineer, said the prime minister “should fear God.”