Mohammed Allawi’s decision to withdraw his candidacy for the position of prime minister has left Iraq at an impasse and confronted Shiite parties with the need to choose a successor. The country had 12 days to appoint a new figure, five of which have already passed. Differences among Shiite parties have strengthened the hand of Sunni and Kurdish parties that had withheld confidence from a cabinet lineup proposed by Allawi. The failure to approve the lineup at parliament led him to withdraw his candidacy. The Sunni and Kurdish parties, including President Barham Salih, have effectively thrown the ball back in the Shiite court. The president is entitled by the constitution to nominate any figure he deems fit to form a cabinet. This figure does not necessarily have to be part of the largest parliamentary bloc. Salih, however, opted to allow the Shiites to choose the prime minister in line with political norms that have been in place in Iraq since 2003. The Sunnis and Kurds did not oppose Allawi’s nomination, but they rejected his political performance and his failure to hold any serious negotiations with them over the government. MP Mohammed al-Karbouli told Asharq Al-Awsat: “Allawi was a mystery until the very end. He did not have a clear approach in choosing ministers.” He added that the majority of the names he chose for his cabinet were “unsuitable” for their posts. “It would be wrong to claim that we objected to ministerial shares. He did in fact try to reach an understanding with us and the Kurds in the end. This meant making concessions. We were clear in stating that we were mainly concerned about the cabinet’s agenda. He was not clear about this,” he explained. MP Salem al-Ghaban told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Shiites are “deeply divided” about the crisis over naming a new premier. “There appears to be no light at the end of the tunnel,” he remarked, despite acknowledging the efforts to bridge divides and resolve disputes among Shiite leaderships. He blamed the lack of progress in resolving the dispute to the “intransigence” of some leaderships that refuse to show any flexibility that would lead to an agreement. He predicted that they will fail to name a PM within the constitutional deadline. Moreover, Ghaban remarked that Qassem Soleimani, the top Iranian commander killed in a US strike earlier this year, “always used to bring together the divided Iraqi Shiites.”