Shafaq News- Baghdad

Iraq’s Parliament elected Nizar Amedi as president on Saturday, following a second round of voting in which he secured 227 votes.

The vote came after no candidate reached the two-thirds threshold (220 out of 329 lawmakers) in the first round, sending the process to a runoff under constitutional rules requiring half-plus-one, or 165 votes.

Parliament announced the result after completing the vote-counting process for the second round, in which 249 lawmakers participated.

Lawmakers from the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the largest Kurdish bloc in parliament and a rival to Amedi’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), boycotted the session.

Amedi had led the first round with 208 votes, advancing alongside independent candidate Muthanna Amin. With his victory, he becomes Iraq’s sixth president since 2003, following the fall of the Baath Party regime led by former president Saddam Hussein.

Read more: Iraq’s April 11 presidential vote: Who will attend?

Who is Nizar Amedi?

Amedi is a senior PUK party leader and former Iraqi environment minister. He resigned from his ministerial post in 2024 to focus on political and party work. He currently heads the PUK’s political bureau in Baghdad and is a member of the State Administration Coalition. Amedi holds a degree in mechanical engineering and has played a growing role in the PUK’s federal-level strategy.

He previously served as chief of staff to the current President Abdul Latif Jamal Rashid in 2022, and held the same post under former President Barham Salih between 2018 and 2022. He also acted as the president’s representative to the Council of Ministers.

Earlier in his career, Amedi headed the office of former President Fuad Masum from 2014 to 2018, and served as chief of staff to the late President Jalal Talabani between 2008 and 2014. From 2005 to 2008, he worked as Talabani’s personal secretary, placing him among a small circle of officials with long-standing institutional experience at the heart of Iraq’s presidency.