Iraq Officials Mull Provisional Government After Split Vote

Iraq’s Hikma Movement is suggesting that, given the divides after the last election, politicians are considering forming a temporary provisional government to govern while a solution is sought.

Needing 165 seats to form a majority government, there seems no path for anyone at this point. Indeed, many factions are unwilling to even discuss matters. There’s no real point in trying to run an immediate second vote, so the provisional government could handle day-to-day operations while the parties work out where to go from here.

Provisional governments are not unheard of in multi-party representative systems. At present, there are six such governments in place: Chad, Sudan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Belarus.

This is most often seen in a nation where a main party has major differences with the others that all but precludes them in a coalition. In Iraq’s case, this is the Sadr party, which is calling for major reforms and anti-corruption measures, and less dependence on foreign powers. All of this is virtually unthinkable for the other parties.