ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - Iraqi Shiite cleric and leader of the National Shiite Movement Muqtada al-Sadr on Saturday directed his supporters to update voters registration IDs even if they are to boycott the country’s November elections.

Sadr on Saturday, while reviewing the voter ID update process of his armed group Sarayya al-Salam, stressed the need for updating voter IDs “even in the event of a boycott.”

“Whoever boycotts but has not updated their voter ID, their boycott has no effect,” Sadr said.

Iraq is expected to hold elections on November 11.

Sadr last month 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 at the time.

“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.

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.