Shafaq News- Baghdad

The State of Law Coalition, led by former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, decided to boycott Al-Ahd TV, a broadcaster affiliated with Asaib Ahl al-Haq and led by Qais al-Khazali, a senior source within the coalition told Shafaq News on Saturday.

The source said that the leadership accused the channel of aligning with and promoting positions taken by Mohammed al-Halbousi, head of the Taqaddum Party, and other controversial figures opposed to Al-Maliki’s bid to return as prime minister.

Al-Halbousi recently appeared in a televised interview on a local Iraqi channel, where he openly rejected Al-Maliki’s nomination for the premiership, echoing the United States’ publicly stated opposition to any return of the former prime minister to power. Al-Halbousi attributed his stance to what he described as the deterioration of security conditions and repeated political crises during Al-Maliki’s two terms in office from 2006 to 2014. Al-Maliki’s second term ended amid one of Iraq’s gravest security collapses, when ISIS seized control of roughly a third of the country’s territory in mid-2014.

Al-Maliki has emerged as the official candidate of the Shiite Coordination Framework, the largest bloc in the Iraqi parliament, which holds around 185 of the 329 seats. His nomination has reportedly secured backing from major Kurdish parties, including the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), as well as segments of the Sunni National Political Council.

Read more: Nouri Al-Maliki’s return rekindles Iraq’s divisions as Iran and the US pull apart