ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Massoud Barzani, president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Region is eligible to run for a third four-year term because of a constitutional ambiguity, the deputy head of the regional parliament said, as opposition groups gird for a political battle to have him step down after finishing his time.
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Massoud Barzani, president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Region is eligible to run for a third four-year term because of a constitutional ambiguity, the deputy head of the regional parliament said, as opposition groups gird for a political battle to have him step down after finishing his time.
Hassan Sura told Rudaw that Barzani, 66, is eligible to run because he first took presidential office in 2005 after appointment by the regional parliament, and was elected only once, in 2009. According to him, Barzani’s first four years do not apply to the two-term constitutional limit on the presidency.
“Barzani’s initial appointment in 2005 by the MPs shouldn’t be counted,” said Sura, who is from the president’s own Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). He said that constitutionally the leader had run, won and completed a presidential term only once.
Elections for the regional parliament and presidency are set for September, though the date has not yet been formally announced.
Barzani, who won 70 percent of the votes in 2009 and is the son of the late pre-eminent Kurdish nationalist leader Mullah Mustafa, has not declared his candidacy but is widely expected to run.
But opposition groups, notably the Change Movement (Gorran) which came virtually out of nowhere and swept 25 of the Kurdistan Parliament’s 111 seats in 2009, oppose another term for Barzani. They say it would be “illegal” for him to run again.
“The Kurdistan Region’s Presidential Law clearly forbids Barzani from running for another term,” said Faruq Jamil, justice minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government, adding that the law was clear about the meaning of a presidential “term.”
Sura said that, according to Article 17 of the constitution, Barzani “has all the legal rights to run for another term. However, the best solution is what the majority of Kurdish people agree on,” he added, referring to a possible referendum over the constitution.
