On Jan. 26, 2013, the Iraqi parliament approved a law limiting to two terms the mandates of Iraqi presidents, prime ministers and parliament speakers. Since then, Iraq has witnessed an ongoing debate about the law, which passed with the votes of 170 deputies, mostly from the Iraqiyya bloc, Sadrists, the Kurdistan Alliance, and the Supreme Islamic Council. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s bloc and its allies boycotted the session.
The term-limit law is controversial because Article 72 of the Iraqi Constitution, which adopted the parliamentarian system, limits the presidential mandate to two terms but says nothing about how many terms the prime minister or the parliament speaker can have.