EXCLUSIVE: Iraq PM Abadi doubles down on 'technocratic' cabinet plan

Opponents accuse Abadi of 'leading a coup' but PM tells MEE that Moqtada al-Sadr demanded the new cabinet, threatened raid

Suadad al-Salhy-Tuesday 5 April 2016

BAGHDAD - Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has rejected complaints from political opponents that they were not consulted before he last week named a new “technocratic” cabinet in response to anti-corruption protests and calls for political reform.

Abadi has been accused of undermining democracy and “leading a coup” against Iraq’s power-sharing political structure that has been in place since 2003, which guarantees a certain number of political positions to the country’s Shia, Sunni and Kurdish blocs.

But Abadi told Middle East Eye in a phone interview that rival political blocs had not responded to his request for them to nominate their preferred independent candidates for cabinet posts last month.

He also said that the call for an independent cabinet had come from Moqtada al-Sadr, the influential Shia cleric who last week threatened to raid Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone unless his demands for political reform were met.

“I asked the blocs at the beginning of last month to nominate the technocrats who they thought were suitable, but they did not do so,” Abadi told MEE.

“It was Sadr who demanded a government of technocrats, in which everyone is independent except for the prime minister. It was not my demand.”

Abadi said he was committed to conducting government business in a professional manner, without interference from either his own or other political blocs.

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