ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — A Kurdish lawmaker said Saturday that the Kurdistan parliament is carefully considering the outcome of a series of meetings on the future of Kurdistan region President Masoud Barzani, and whether he should be allowed to remain in office. Barzani’s term expired Thursday.
"We could not hold the emergency session of August 19 because the quorum was not met, we suspended it to await the result of meetings being held between political parties and no time frame is allotted to re-hold the session,” Bahar Mahmood, deputy president of the legal affairs committee in the Kurdistan parliament, told Rudaw on Saturday.
Mahmood, who is from the Change Movement (Gorran) in the Kurdistan parliament, said a decision was needed now, and that they would no longer wait on the political parties.
The parliament suspended an emergency session meant to reach agreement on the presidential term of Barzani after the required number of lawmakers failed to attend.
Only 53 parliamentarians showed up at the session in Erbil on Wednesday, not enough to reach the 56 representatives needed to obtain a quorum.
The boycott was led by the 38 MPs of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), who refused to attend the session. The four other major political parties, including Gorran, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Kurdistan Islamic League (KIL) and some members of the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU) attended the session.
Barzani’s presidency was set to expire on Thursday and his KDP asked for an extension, which would be his second since 2013. The issue has polarized political parties in the region's already factional parliament.
