Sadrist movement reiterates its position on October's elections, multimillion demonstrations on the way

Shafaq News/ The Sadrist movement did not demand postponing the elections, MP of Sairoon, the movement's parliamentary bloc, Riad al-Masoudi, said on Thursday, hinting at "public demands for multimillion demonstrations."

In a statement to Shafaq News Agency, al-Masoudi said, "the movement did not call for postponing the elections ever. The movement was a main contributor to expediting the process of forming the electoral committee and formulating its act in preparation for early elections."

"Everybody does how it went toward burning down the country, toward deepening corruption and quotas," he continued, "it became obvious to the Sadrist move. October elections will bring nothing new."

"We have to distinguish between the elections pursuant to Article 64 of the constitution, 'elections within the framework of the constitution', and that pursuant to Article 56, 'political elections', which requires obtaining the approval of the political blocs to dissolve the Parliament."

"Political election necessitates real reforms. The Shiite blocs pledged to execute these reforms...These reforms will only be executed after the elections. However, there are some other communities in the countries -Sunni, Kurds, Turkmen- that does not prioritize what the Shiite blocs want. They have their own agendas."

"The Sadrist movement's involvement in the elections will not be useful or fruitful," al-Masoudi said, "the results are foregone, the turnover as well."

"Millions of biometric cards have not been delivered. More than three million voters did not receive their cards. Consequently, there will be no fair representation. The same political forces will remain in power, and protests will erupt again."

The Sadrist MP refuted the movement's involvement in calling for demonstrations. "These are public demands. The people are demanding multimillion demonstrations to exhibit loyalty and obedience to God and his messenger, the Sadr family, and Iraq."

In mid-July, the leader of the Sadrist movement, Muqtada al-Sadr, announced that his party will not run for the parliamentary elections scheduled for October 10. Other parties took the same decision later.

The elections do not enjoy a consensus among political and public circles, with many parties demanding its postponement for the lack of security, political, and logistic grounds.