ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – A newly-formed Sunni political council in Iraq has set four conditions for choosing the next speaker of parliament, a position reserved for the community, a prominent Sunni politician said on Sunday. 

The National Political Council, an umbrella group of Sunni parties, met to discuss the progress on choosing Iraq’s next parliament speaker, as the constitutional deadlines for the position approach. 

Azam al-Hamdani, a prominent member from the Azm Alliance, told the state-owned al-Sabah newspaper that the next speaker must exclusively work for the Sunnis “and not for a party or a person,” and must be a political leader or from the component’s senior leadership.

The ideal candidate must also “not be exploited for partisan or personal purposes far removed from Sunni aspirations, and he must guarantee the constitutional rights” of the component, Hamdani explained. 

In late November, Sunni leaders from Taqaddum, Azm, the Sovereignty Alliance, Hasm al-Watani, and the Al-Jamahir Party announced the formation of the National Political Council, a unified Sunni bloc modeled on the Shiite Coordination Framework.

Hamdani stressed that the Council has yet to agree on a candidate “despite many names having been mentioned.” 

Firas al-Jasiri, another member of the Council, told the state newspaper that their latest meeting “did not produce an agreement on a specific candidate,” adding that the matter remains under consideration. 

Iraq concluded its sixth parliamentary elections on November 11, in which over 7,750 candidates competed for the Iraqi legislature’s 329 seats. No party won enough seats to earn a parliamentary majority, with inter-party negotiations to form the next Iraqi cabinet being essential as a result. 

Mohammed al-Halbousi’s Taqaddum Party and its coalitions scored the highest number of seats among the Sunni forces in the recent elections, securing 36 seats.