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Kirkuk's elections to be held before end
of 2009
24.9.2008
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September
24, 2008
BAGHDAD, — A lawmaker from the Kurdish bloc
on Wednesday said Parliament decided to set up a
committee that will work to prepare the groundwork
for the organization of elections in Kirkuk.
"A committee consisting of two representatives each
from the Arab, Kurdish and Turkmen communities and
one from the Christian community will work to
prepare the groundwork for the organization of
elections in Kirkuk provided that the voting be held
before the end of 2009," MP Khalid Shawani from the
Kurdish Alliance (KA) told VOI.
MPs have now agreed to postpone the polls in Kirkuk
and three northern provinces that already form part
of the autonomous Kurdish region so that elections
can be held in the other 14 provinces by January 31.
Elections in Kirkuk will not now be held until after
March 2009 and the existing multi-communal council
will continue to administer the province.
The Lawmaker pointed out the Parliament streamlined
the committee work as it "would start the mechanism
of dividing up authority in Kirkuk,www.ekurd.net
reviewing citizenship
records and voters registry along with checking the
excesses that took place before and after April
2003," adding "it must be done through the
mechanisms adopted in lifting excesses in other
provinces."
The MP stressed all MPs agreed on the UN envoy's
recommendations which stated "participation of
federal government and Kurdistan's regional
government in supplying the support to make the
political process in Kirkuk succeed."
"When the Parliament fails to enact the law, it will
seek help of the premiership, Presidential Board,
along with international bodies to help enact the
law," he added.
Deputies passed the provincial election law last
July, but Kurdish MPs boycotted the session partly
because the bill delayed voting in Kirkuk.
President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, then rejected the
law as unconstitutional and sent it back. Iraq's
three-member Presidential Board, which includes
Talabani, must ratify all legislation.
Iraq's political blocs have met in recent days to
try to reach a compromise on the law, but they
failed to reach any breakthroughs.
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,www.ekurd.net
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, Arabs and
Turkmen get 10 seats each. Minority Christians get
two.
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.
Enacting elections bill day
for democracy – parliament's speaker
Speaker of the Iraqi Council of Representatives,
Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, on Wednesday said that
enacting the provincial elections bill is a day for
democracy and a symbol of national consensus in
Iraq.
"This is a great day for Iraq, and a day for
democracy in which Iraqis proved that they can reach
consensus solutions," al-Mashhadani said in a press
conference in Baghdad.
"Kirkuk was the mother of problems, but today it
became a symbol of the Iraqi unity," he added.
Earlier today, the Iraqi Parliament unanimously
passed the provincial elections law.
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.
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, VOI |
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