17 April 2016•Update: 18 April 2016
By Ali Jawad
BAGHDAD
Iraqi security forces stepped up security in Baghdad on Sunday -- especially near the Green Zone -- one day before parliamentarians are slated to elect a new assembly speaker.
Security forces also imposed a vehicle-free zone in and around Baghdad’s Tahrir Square to ensure security for hundreds of followers of influential Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr, who began an open-ended sit-in near the Green Zone on Saturday evening.
Baghdad’s Green Zone is home to most government institutions and a number of foreign diplomatic missions.
On Monday, 170 MPs will hold a parliamentary session in which the plan to elect a new assembly speaker to replace Salim al-Jabouri, who was sacked Tuesday following a parliamentary vote.
Mohammed al-Saihoud, a member of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s "State of Law" coalition told Anadolu Agency that MPs would elect a new speaker, along with two deputies.
Al-Saihoud went on to note that Monday’s parliamentary session would allow "any MP who believes they are qualified to nominate him or herself to the position of speaker, without any reference to earlier quotas based on sectarian affiliations".
"The post will be open to Sunni candidates as well," he stressed. "We don’t want anyone to say that any particular groups have been excluded."
Dozens of MPs have been staging an open-ended sit-in inside parliament following the postponement Tuesday of a scheduled assembly vote on a new cabinet lineup proposed by al-Abadi.
Al-Abadi’s proposed lineup includes figures from several political blocs, despite calls by the Sadrist movement and other Iraqi political groups to form a government of "technocrats" untainted by sectarian affiliations.
*Ali Abo Rezeg contributed to this report
