ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - Iraq’s powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on Thursday said that he will not be participating in the upcoming elections and called on his followers not to vote or run for office, citing ongoing “corruption” in the country.

“Let everyone know that as long as corruption exists, I will not participate in a limping electoral process that is only concerned with sectarian, ethnic, and partisan interests, far removed from the suffering of the people and the disasters taking place in the region, the main cause of which is the plunging of Iraq and its people into incinerators that it has no stake in,” read a statement from Sadr on Thursday.

Last month, Sadr, who has been out of the Iraqi political scene since August 2022, urged his supporters to update their voter registrations; a move that was interpreted as a potential shift in his stance on participating in the upcoming elections.

However, on Thursday, the leader of National Shiite Movement, said that participating in the elections “constitutes assistance in sin.”

“Just as I ordered them [supporters] to vote, today I forbid them all from voting and running for office, for it constitutes assistance in sin. What benefit can be expected from the participation of the corrupt and the subservient while Iraq is living its last breaths?” Sadr added.

Iraq is set to hold parliamentary elections later this year, but no specific date has yet to be announced for the vote.

Sadr, whose movement emerged as the main victor from the 2021 Iraqi parliamentary elections after gaining 73 seats, ordered all his MPs to resign from the legislature in June 2022 after his attempts to form the next government were repeatedly blocked, mainly by the pro-Iran Shiite Coordination Framework.

In protest, Sadr’s supporters entered Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, staging a sit-in for over a month before violent clashes broke out between them and supporters of the Coordination Framework in late August 2022, during which at least 23 people were killed and over 380 others were wounded.

Sadr announced his “definitive” retirement from politics shortly after the clashes.