Iraq’s firebrand Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr made a high-stakes protest Thursday by calling on the 73 lawmakers loyal to him to ready resignation papers to end an eight-month parliamentary paralysis. Parliament in Baghdad has been in turmoil since October’s general election, and intense negotiations among political factions have failed to forge a majority in support of a new prime minister to succeed Mustafa Al-Kadhemi. The two Shia groupings — a coalition led by Sadr, and its powerful rival, the Coordination Framework — each claim to hold a parliamentary majority, and with it the right to appo…