ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraqi Shiite cleric and politician Muqtada al-Sadr announced on Thursday that the National Shiite Movement he leads, formerly known as the Sadrist Movement, will sit out the 2025 legislative elections in protest of "corruption."
The X account of Salih Mohammad al-Iraqi - known for channeling Sadr’s views - on Thursday shared a handwritten response from the cleric to an inquiry from one of his followers about the “role of the National Shiite Movement in the upcoming parliamentary elections” in Iraq, slated for October 2025.
Sadr responded, "So long as corruption is prevalent, I will not participate in a flawed electoral process that only aims to secure ethnic, partisan and sectarian interests, far from the suffering of the [Iraqi] people and the unfolding disasters in the region.”
Addressing his supporters, the influential cleric stated, “As I had previously directed them to vote in the elections, today I forbid them from both voting and running” in the 2025 ballot.
The complete turnaround notably comes after Sadr had in early March met with former Sadrist lawmakers at his Hanana headquarters in Iraq’s southern province of Najaf. The meeting was attended by around 200 former lawmakers affiliated with previous Sadrist parliamentary blocs.
Shortly after, in mid-March, Sadr urged supporters to prepare for the country’s 2025 elections, calling on them to vote carefully and warning that poor electoral choices could deepen corruption and poverty in the country.
The Sadrists emerged as the top force in Iraq’s October 2021 parliamentary elections, securing 73 seats in the 329-member Iraqi legislature. However, their effort to establish a “national majority” government together with Sunni Arab and Kurdish allies ultimately failed.
The rival Shiite-led Coordination Framework then insisted on the post-2003 norm of establishing a consensus government. The deadlock ultimately prompted the Sadrist lawmakers to resign en masse.
After a 21 months hiatus from the political process, Sadr in May renamed his movement as the National Shiite Movement, a move that was widely interpreted as a precursor to re-enter the Iraqi political scene.
In mid-February, Sadr urged his supporters to update their voter registration records. However, a former Sadrist lawmaker, Rafi Abduljabbar Azzawi, then told Rudaw that the cleric’s request “does not necessarily indicate a shift in his stance on participating in Iraq’s upcoming elections, but rather to urge Iraqis to take a stand in the critical period ahead.”
