Opposition Parties in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region Eye Regional Presidency

 

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Opposition parties in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Region remain undecided whether to name a candidate for the regional presidency, while the incumbent Massoud Barzani’s party has said it may seek a way around constitutional limitations that prevent him from running for a third four-year term.

The opposition parties have agreed to “have one nominee for the office, but we still have to decide which party the nominee will come from,” said Muhammed Haji, an official of the Change Movement (Gorran), the largest opposition with 25 places in the 111-seat regional parliament.

He told Rudaw that his party’s head, Nawshirwan Mustafa, “is still studying whether he should run for the office.”

But officials from the other two main opposition parties, the Kurdistan Islamic League (Komal) and the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU), say they are discussing whether to nominate their own candidates.

Komal officials said the party is considering nominating leader Ali Bapir, while KIU members said their chief, Salahadin Bahadin, could throw his hat in the ring.

“I qualify to run for the post, but it is too early to decide,” Bahadin said recently.

Strong competition in the elections, which Barzani has said should be held no later than September, is expected to make the polls one of the most heated in the region.

Already, one of the hottest political topics in the three-province region in northern Iraq, which gained autonomy following the 2003 US invasion, is whether Barzani will want to run again.

His powerful Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which together with the smaller Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) governs the ruling Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), has said the president has not made a final decision, but that there are legal ways to allow him to join the race.

Observers say that in all likelihood Barzani, who remains popular and won 70 percent of the vote in the 2009 polls, will seek another term.