Speaker stresses Parliament’s legislative, monitoring role

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: Speaker Iyad al-Samarraie on Sunday stressed the necessity of activating the legislative and monitoring role of the Iraqi Parliament and implementing constitutional amendments and the political reform document. “Tomorrow I will preside over my first session as speaker. My top priorities are to implement the constitutional amendments and the political reform document and to monitor the fact finding committee,” Samarraie said during his first press conference after he was elected as speaker. Earlier today, the vote counting to elect a speaker ended with Iyad al-Samarraie winning the post with 154 votes, according to a lawmaker on Sunday. Samarraie, who won the majority of votes, was born in 1946 in the city of Samarra, Salah al-Din province. Samarraie is descending from a renowned family. His father used to be the military attaché in an Arab country before receiving a death sentence and was executed in the 1970s. Samarraie was also a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP). He climbed up the partisan ladder in Iraq and was tracked down by the former regime in 1980. He received a death sentence and had to leave Iraq for neighboring Jordan, later to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and then to the United Kingdom (UK), where he re-established the IIP. SS (P) 1