No sanctions… A constitutional loophole allows for violating the timelines for forming the Iraqi government.
No sanctions… A constitutional loophole allows for violating the timelines for forming the Iraqi government.
2026-04-26
Shafaq News – Baghdad
Legal and constitutional expert Habib Al-Quraishi confirmed on Sunday that the permanent constitution of the Republic of Iraq of 2005 set clear constitutional timelines for regulating the process of building the state’s constitutional institutions after the Federal Supreme Court ratified the results of the general parliamentary elections, indicating that most of these timelines are considered regulatory and not mandatory, as they are not associated with a legal penalty for exceeding them.
Al-Quraishi told Shafaq News Agency that “the first of these stages begins from the date of ratification of the results, as Article (54) obliges the President of the Republic to call the House of Representatives to convene by presidential decree within a period not exceeding 15 days, provided that the first session is held under the chairmanship of the oldest member to elect the Speaker of the Council and his two deputies, with an explicit stipulation that this period may not be extended, and this obligation is repeated in Article (73/Fourth) concerning the powers of the President of the Republic.”
He added that “Article (55) of the Constitution specified the mechanism for electing the Speaker of the House of Representatives in the first session, as the Council elects a Speaker, then a First Deputy Speaker and a Second Deputy Speaker by an absolute majority of its members, and by direct secret ballot,” explaining that “Article (72/Second/B) stipulated, with regard to the position of President of the Republic, that the current President shall continue to perform his duties until a new President is elected, provided that this is done within 30 days from the date of the first meeting of the new House of Representatives.”
Al-Quraishi continued, saying that “Article (76) regulates the mechanism for assigning the Prime Minister, as the President of the Republic assigns the candidate of the largest parliamentary bloc within 15 days from the date of the election of the President of the Republic, while the assigned person is given a maximum period of 30 days to name the members of his government and present them, along with the ministerial program, to the House of Representatives to obtain confidence by an absolute majority.”
He pointed out that if the first person tasked with forming the government fails to do so within the specified period, then the President of the Republic must task a new candidate within 15 days, and the same applies if the government does not gain parliamentary confidence. He explained that the completion of the formation of constitutional institutions is done according to this time sequence, which begins from the day of ratification of the results, while the constitution stipulated one extension case indirectly, which is the re-tasking when the first candidate for the premiership fails.
Al-Quraishi revealed that “the constitutional legislator did not set explicit penalties for violating these deadlines, which makes most of them regulatory deadlines aimed at urging the authorities to accomplish within a time frame, without creating a direct legal effect when they are exceeded.”
Al-Quraishi also pointed out that “the texts regulating the formation of authorities were not included in a unified chronological sequence, but were distributed across the chapters and sections of the constitution according to each authority and its powers, and it would have been better, legislatively, to gather them in an independent chapter that regulates the mechanism for building constitutional institutions in a sequential and clear manner.”
The legal expert concluded his remarks by saying that “legal and constitutional deadlines are generally divided into two types: regulatory deadlines, the exceeding of which does not entail a penalty, and mandatory deadlines, the expiry of which leads to the loss of the right or the establishment of a legal effect, as is the case with the deadlines for judicial appeal, and the majority of the deadlines mentioned in the Iraqi constitution fall under the first type.”
The forces of the Coordination Framework have been experiencing a series of faltering meetings for days, under the pressure of the constitutional deadline to task the candidate of the largest bloc with forming the government, after the election of the President of the Republic, while political sources speak of intensive attempts to avoid the disputes moving into a new stage of political deadlock.
shafaq.com
