Moqtada Tateral-Sadr
... the Iranian catspaw holy man who was 22 years old in 2003 and was nearing 40 in 2010. He spends most of his time in Iran, safely out of the line of fire, where he's learning to be an ayatollah...
who heads Sairoon alliance, the biggest parliamentary bloc, called upon his bloc members not to take any ministerial posts.
Abdul Mahdi was named two hours following the naming of moderate Kurdish candidate Barham Salih to head the post of president of Iraq on Tuesday. Read more
In a tweet on Wednesday, al-Sadr said that he succeeded in appointing an independent figure for the prime minister position, pointing out that he instructed his parliamentary bloc’s members not to be in the coming new government, in order to give more options for Adel Abdul Mahdi to form his government.
Sadr expressed in his tweet his satisfaction in naming Abdul Mahdi who is an independent figure and clean from government corruption, as he said.
He called on all political parties not to put pressure on the options of Abdul Mahdi, so that he can form a cabinet free from party quotas - sectarian and ethnic - while maintaining the diversity of the Iraqi society.
The Shiite leader gave the government of Abdul Mahdi a full year to prove itself in front of the Iraqi people.
In reference to the outgoing government of Haidar al-Abadi, al-Sadr said: "The next government will proceed with great strides towards building Iraq on the right bases, as his predecessor tried, away from the exclusivity of authority and position."