Shafaq News
Iraq’s Councilof Representatives closed its first legislative term on June 1, having approvedalmost no substantive legislation, ending a period in which political deadlockover cabinet formation consumed the chamber’s first months and left a longqueue of strategic laws untouched. Nine ministerial portfolios remain vacant,and the parliament will not reconvene until July 1.
Laws governingfederal oil revenue, electoral reform, and public finance have been pending formonths, in some cases for years, and the brief window between the end of recessand the close of the fiscal year leaves limited time for meaningful legislativeaction.
Iraq’s November2025 elections produced a fragmented parliament anchored by the CoordinationFramework, a broad alliance of Shia political parties with varying ties to Iranthat collectively form the largest parliamentary bloc. Under Iraq’s post-2003power-sharing system, known as muhasasa, state positions are distributed acrossthe country’s main ethnic and sectarian communities. The arrangement wasdesigned to prevent majoritarian exclusion; its cost is a government formationprocess that is structurally slow and frequently hostage to intra-coalitiondisputes.
From theinaugural session on December 29, 2025, through mid-May 2026, the government of Mohammed Shia al-Sudani continued in a caretaker capacity,without a mandate to pursue new policy. The parliament that sat alongside itwas not idle, but it was not legislating.
Speaker Haibetal-Halbousi, a Sunni politician from the Taqaddum party who won 208 votes inthe opening session, presided over a chamber that spent the bulk of its firstfifteen sittings on the procedural work of constituting its own committees, aprocess that in previous cycles moved considerably faster.
Parliamentfinally granted a confidence vote to Prime Minister Ali Faleh al-Zaidi on May14, approving 14 of 23 ministerial nominees in a session described by multipleattendees as contentious. Nominees for the interior, higher education, andplanning portfolios failed to secure approval; votes on defense, labor,housing, and culture were deferred with no date set. Al-Zaidi, a 41-year-oldbusinessman with no prior political office, was nominated by the CoordinationFramework as a consensus candidate after the United States effectively vetoedformer Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s return. He took the constitutional oathwith a partial cabinet and has governed with acting ministers filling thevacant posts since.
The confidencevote came barely two weeks before the mandatory June 1 recess, leaving noviable legislative window. Calls from within the Coordination Framework for anemergency session during the recess to resolve the remaining nine portfolioshave not produced results.
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A PatrioticUnion of Kurdistan lawmaker, Harem Kamal Agha, confirmed at a press conferencethat the vacancies will be addressed only after parliament reconvenes in July. Coordination Framework MP Amer al-Fayez stated separately that political blocshad yet to submit nominees, making any session before July 1 unlikely.
Lawmaker HassanWarioush, of the al-Nahj al-Watani bloc, traced the legislative shortfalldirectly to the incomplete executive. “The parliament has not yet taken itsreal role,” he told Shafaq News, adding that nine ministries remain withoutconfirmed ministers.
Warioushexplained that most parliamentary committees lack permanent chairs and arebeing managed temporarily by their most senior members, noting thatchairmanship allocations follow the same sectarian and ethnic balance thatgoverns cabinet formation. “The selection of committee chairs is waiting forthe ministers to be decided,” he said. “If a minister comes from one community,the committee chair goes to another to achieve political balance.” The resultis a legislature whose internal architecture remains provisional.
Yazidi MP MahmaKhalil called the current session is weaker even than the fifth,” citing theelectoral system, the absence of centralized decision-making within politicalblocs, and the compounding pressures of a prolonged formation period.
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After more thansix months since the first sitting, Khalil argued, the parliament has exercisedneither its legislative nor its oversight function in any meaningful sense. Thelegislation Iraqis most urgently need, he said, from a federal budget to thelong-delayed oil and gas law, to revenue maximization and privatizationframeworks, has not been touched. “The parliament does not yet have a clearlegislative program or a roadmap for addressing the major issues.”
Former MPRaheem al-Darraji, who served in previous parliamentary terms and has observedthe chamber’s accountability function over time, told Shafaq News that thecapacity for genuine executive scrutiny has been eroding for years. “Oversightduring recent years has not been at the level it was ten or fifteen years ago,the executive authority has exerted pressure on some oversight bodies, and thishas been reflected in the level of scrutiny applied to corruption files andgovernment contracts.”
Al-Darrajicalled on parliament to summon the head of the Board of Supreme Audit and otheraccountability officials to account publicly for the constraints on their work. Individual legislators are pursuing corruption dossiers, he acknowledged, buttheir efforts remain disconnected from any institutional framework. “Theoverall performance of the parliament in legislation and oversight remainsbelow expectations, despite the slogans raised about fighting corruption.”
The integrityand electricity committees have conducted field visits to governmentinstitutions since the term began, but the lawmakers have assessed these asinsufficient given the scale of financial irregularities under activediscussion. The federal budget itself requires structural revision before itcan be presented for a vote, with Kurdish lawmaker from the PUK, SirwaMohammed, indicating that prospects for passing a comprehensive budget law in 2026are slim. The government is expected to submit spending allocations forsalaries and public expenditures as an interim measure.
Compounding thepressure is the oil and gas law, a piece of legislation whose absence has leftthe legal relationship between Baghdad and the Kurdistan Region’s energy sectorin a state of managed ambiguity for nearly two decades. Electoral lawamendments that will govern the next cycle must also clear parliament withenough lead time for the Independent High Electoral Commission to implementthem. None of these files will move before July.
A parliamentthat spent six months forming itself now has to govern, and the files waitingafter July 1 are problems that previous chambers deferred, and this oneinherited alongside everything else. The budget has no vote, nine ministrieshave acting ministers, and the oil and gas law, pending since 2007, will test acoalition that has not yet demonstrated it can agree on anything harder than aconfidence motion.
Baghdad hasseen reform agendas announced with similar urgency before, and most of themsettled quietly into the same backlog they were meant to clear. The al-Zaidigovernment has a program, the chamber behind it is still finding its shape, andJuly arrives in ten days.
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Written and editedby Shafaq News staff.