PUK Taken Aback as Najmaldin Karim Enters Race for Iraq Presidency

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Najmaldin Karim, the powerful Kurdish governor of Kirkuk, has caused a stir inside his Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) by submitting his name for the Iraqi presidency, but without the party’s consent.

A PUK official confirmed that Karim had submitted his candidacy. The office of the presidency declined to comment on the issue, and calls to Karim himself went unanswered.

Karim is a close friend of Jalal Talabani, the PUK leader and Iraq’s president, who has been in Germany since a stroke in December 2012.

As news about Karim broke on Wednesday Hero Ibrahim Ahmed, a PUK leader and Talabani’s wife, said the party had not finalized its nomination for the presidency.

Kosrat Rasul Ali and Mala Bakhtyar, two senior PUK leaders, said in a statement that, “Only the political bureau has the authority to nominate PUK’s candidate for the presidency, and no one else.

“We will not accept any illegitimate step taken contrary to the political bureau,” they said.

Their statement added that the PUK would formally announce its candidate for the position in the next three days, and inform Kurdistan Region President Massoud Barzani of its choice.

Rasul and Bakhtyar were not alone in their reaction. Hakim Qadir Hamajan, a member of the party leadership, also said that only the party can choose the candidate.

“Only the person chosen by the PUK leadership will be the PUK and Kurdistan’s candidate for this post, and for this we will talk with all Kurdish and Iraqi parties,” he said.

According to a political agreement among the various Iraqi factions, the post of the president goes to the Kurds, and specifically to the PUK, while the premiership goes to the Shiites and the post of parliament speaker is reserved for a Sunni.

The issue of choosing the president gained greater urgency Wednesday after Iraqi MPs finally elected Salim al-Jabouri as speaker of the parliament, taking the country one step closer to forming a unity government and getting the parliament on track in the midst of the country’s serious crisis.

Khosrow Goran, the head of the parliamentary bloc of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in the Iraqi parliament, said that any Iraqi citizen has the right to run for president, but that “the Kurdish blocs haven’t decided yet officially on our candidate for Iraq’s presidency.”

Goran said that Iraq’s presidency is for the Kurds as a whole and therefore should be discussed and agreed by all parties.

In his televised weekly speech on Wednesday, Iraq’s embattled Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki confirmed that the presidency would go to the Kurds, and warned that the deadline to choose one was only about two weeks away.

A senior PUK official who spoke to Rudaw on condition of anonymity said that Karim’s act of submitting his name “is an act of turning against the PUK.”

The office of Iraq’s presidency announced this week that the position remained open, and welcomed nominations by July 20.