Kurd parties contest Iraq presidency for first time
BAGHDAD: A parliamentary vote for a new Iraqi president was delayed as the Kurds’ two dominant parties for the first time contest the post reserved for a Kurd.
The election in Baghdad will now take place on Tuesday, two days after parliamentary polls in autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan and one year after the Kurds’ ill-fated independence referendum.
The presidency has been reserved for the Kurds since Iraq’s first multi-party elections in 2005, two years after the USled invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.
Under a tacit accord between the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the PUK would hold the federal presidency and the KDP the post of Iraqi Kurdistan’s president.
But the Iraqi Kurdish presidency has been left vacant since KDP leader Massud Barzani resigned at the end of his mandate following the September 2017 referendum that he championed.
The KDP and PUK candidates for president of Iraq, where the prime minister is head of government, have been touring the south of the country to lobby for support and win the backing of deputies in the federal parliament.
The PUK’s Barham Saleh, a 58year- old moderate, has served in both administrations – as Iraqi deputy premier and Kurdish prime minister.
His rival for the post of president is the KDP’s Fuad Hussein, a former chief of staff for Barzani and veteran of the opposition to Saddam. — AFP