The dreams that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had to remain in his post for a third term are likely to have completely vanished, just like the dreams of his State of Law coalition, which is seeking to remain a large bloc in parliament to bargain over influential positions in the next government.
The development that settled the matter in this direction is the position of the Shiite authorities in Najaf, which have explicitly announced that they oppose the electoral system that Maliki and his coalition want to adopt in the parliamentary elections scheduled for early next year. Maliki and his coalition want to abolish the so-called "Saint Lego" system, which was adopted in the last provincial elections, to return to the closed-list system, deemed by the Federal Court as unconstitutional.
