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Iraq's parliament passes poll law, Kurds
walk out
22.7.2008
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July
22, 2008
BAGHDAD, — Iraq's parliament passed a
provincial elections bill on Tuesday, but a walkout
by Kurdish lawmakers over how to deal with the
disputed oil city of Kirkuk could mean the law will
not be ratified by the presidency.
Kurds make up one of three main groups, and their
boycott of the vote means the bill could be sent
back to parliament.
The law is meant to pave the way for polls seen as
vital to reconciling Iraq's Sunni Arabs, who
boycotted the last provincial elections in 2005,
with its other communities.
"Today parliament passed the provincial elections
law, in the absence of the Kurdish alliance, which
walked out," Hanin Qado, a lawmaker from the ruling
Shi'ite alliance, told Reuters.
Deputy Parliamentary Speaker Khalid al-Attiya cast
doubt on whether a law passed without the Kurds
present would even be ratified by Iraq's presidency
council -- which must approve all laws -- headed by
President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd.
"We cannot have a vote with an absence of a whole
faction. The vote is useless. It will be rejected by
the representatives of this bloc and by the
presidency council," he said.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki wants the election to
take place on Oct. 1,www.ekurd.net
but the Electoral
Commission says it will not have time to organise it
by then, even with the law in place.
Faraj al-Haidari, head of the commission, told
Reuters on Tuesday he could not start implementing
the election law until it was approved by the
presidency council.
He reiterated a warning that time was running out to
hold polls this year, because the commission needed
time to prepare.
The law had been held up by a dispute over what to
do about voting in multi-ethnic Kirkuk, where a
dispute is simmering between Kurds who say the city
should belong to the largely autonomous Kurdistan
region and Arabs who want it to stay under central
government authority.
Arabs and Turkmen believe Kurds have stacked the
city with Kurds since the downfall of Saddam in 2003
to try to tip the demographic balance in their
favour in any vote.
Arabs encouraged to move there under Saddam
Hussein's rule fear the vote will consolidate
Kurdish power and they sought to postpone it, a
proposal Kurdish politicians have rejected.
Parliament decided to postpone the vote and add
another article that the Kurds found unacceptable:
that each ethnic or sectarian group gets a set
allocation of seats and voting is between individual
candidates from those groups. Kurds,www.ekurd.net
Arabs and Turkmen get 10
seats each. Minority Christians get two.
"We walked out because of the illegality of this
article and because the speaker wanted a secret
vote, which is not constitutional," said Fouad
Masoum, head of the Kurdish bloc.
Washington has been urging a speedy provincial
election, which it sees as a pillar of national
reconciliation, but the poll is also proving a
potential flashpoint for tensions.
Besides Kirkuk, analysts say the poll will be
battleground for a power struggle between Shi'ites
in the oil-rich south.
Kirkuk city is historically a Kurdish city
and it lies just south border of the Kurdistan
autonomous region, the population is a mix of
majority Kurds and minority of Arabs, Christians and
Turkmen. lies 250 km northeast of Baghdad. Kurds
have a strong cultural and emotional attachment to Kirkuk,
which they call "the Kurdish Jerusalem."
Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution is related to
the normalization of the situation in Kirkuk city
and other disputed areas.
The article also calls for conducting a census to be
followed by a referendum to let the inhabitants
decide whether they would like Kirkuk to be annexed
to the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region or having
it as an independent province.
These stages were supposed to end on December 31,
2007, a deadline that was later extended to six
months to end in July 2008.
The former regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein
had forced over 250,000 Kurdish residents to give up
their homes to Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize"
the city and the region's oil industry.
Copyright, respective author or news agency, Reuters |
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