Parliament to vote Thursday on deputy PMs, vacant posts and new ministries

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s parliament will vote on Thursday on nominees for deputy prime minister, the vacant cabinet posts and proposed new ministries, five months after Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s government took office without a full cabinet.

The parliamentary leadership set the date on Tuesday, about an hour after Zaidi formally asked for a vote and proposed Thursday. The session, parliament’s 26th, is due to start at 7 p.m., with the vote as its main item. The agenda did not name the nominees or say which new ministries would be put to a vote. A Sadiqoun official had said on Sunday that the vote could come on Monday or Tuesday.

Parliament approved Zaidi’s government on May 14, confirming 14 of 23 ministers and leaving nine portfolios, including interior and defense, unfilled amid disputes among the blocs over how to share them out.

The blocs have also been negotiating a restructuring of existing ministries and new portfolios, including separating tourism from the Culture, Tourism and Antiquities Ministry and creating a ministry for digital transformation and artificial intelligence. Hussein al-Shihani of Sadiqoun, Asaib Ahl al-Haq’s political wing, said Monday that there was no final agreement on the digital ministry.

The Services Alliance, a 10-seat bloc associated with Kataib al-Imam Ali leader Shibl al-Zaidi, has agreed to give up its claim to a deputy prime minister post in exchange for a new ministry overseeing digital transformation, its lawmaker Ali Nuhair al-Saadi said Tuesday. The ministry would consolidate existing government departments without extra staff, he said, and former minister Mohammed Sahib al-Darraji is among three candidates for it. The newspaper Al-Mada reported on Monday that the digital ministry was being discussed as an allocation for Shibl al-Zaidi’s bloc, and that a new tourism ministry could go to a figure associated with Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, as part of negotiations over the factions’ weapons. The U.S. Treasury sanctioned Shibl al-Zaidi in 2018, and the United States designated Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 2023.

Shihani has said the four proposed deputy prime ministers would carry no extra salaries or privileges and would oversee government projects. One of them, Laith al-Khazali, brother of Asaib Ahl al-Haq leader Qais al-Khazali, is under U.S. terrorism sanctions, and Shihani said on Sunday that Zaidi had worked during his New York visit to ease American objections to him.