Iraq constitution amendment committee proposes reducing parliament members to 180

A member of the Constitutional Amendments Committee of Iraq, Mohsen Al-Saadoun, said Wednesday that the committee has proposed to reduce the number of parliament members from 329 to 180 lawmakers, Anadolu News Agency reported.

Al-Saadoun said in a statement that the committee has completed amending the articles of the Iraqi constitution and submitted the proposed amendments to the parliament for discussion and vote.

He explained that some of the amendments included Article 76, which stipulates assigning the largest parliamentary bloc’s candidate to form a government, to the bloc that gets the most votes in the elections without having to form alliances within the parliament.

“The committee has also decided to expand the Iraqi president’s powers, instead of converting the political system from parliamentary to presidential which would require many amendments” he added.

For the past year, the committee has amended several controversial articles in the Iraqi constitution, which was approved in 2005 during the US occupation of Iraq.

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