ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Masrour Barzani, prime minister of the Kurdistan Region, may not form his new cabinet within the 30-day constitutional window after his Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan again failed to reach an agreement on the post of Kirkuk governor. The failure to reach an agreement during their meeting on Wednesday will delay the submission of the PUK’s list of ministers for the new government until further notice. “Our communications and meetings with the KDP will continue for the implementation of the last stages of our agreements on the formation of the government and the Kirkuk question,” Latif Sheikh Omer, the PUK’s spokesperson, told Rudaw on Wednesday afternoon. The KDP and PUK have formed a joint committee comprised of leadership members to decide on a possible candidate for the disputed province. PM Barzani has agreed not to submit his list of candidates for cabinet post to the parliament until next week at the earliest. “If the submission of the name of ministries to the parliament get delayed until the parliamentary recess, which will start from July 1, we can vote for the Masrour Barzani cabinet in an extraordinary sessions or we can delay the recess until after voting on the government cabinet,” Omed Khoshnaw, head of the KDP bloc in the Kurdistan Parliament, told Rudaw. The PUK, the Region’s second biggest party, has repeatedly said it will only participate in the new government if the KDP allows it to nominate the new governor of Kirkuk. Kirkuk is a disputed territory claimed by both Erbil and Baghdad. The oil-rich province was recaptured from Peshmerga forces after the Kurdistan Region’s referendum for independence from Iraq in late 2017. Following the takeover, Kirkuk governor Najmadin Karim was ousted and replaced by his deputy Rakan al-Jabouri. Now the PUK wants to fill the post of Kirkuk governor with its own candidate. The PUK is determined to resolve the problem of Kirkuk before joining the new KRG cabinet “so that we join the government without problems,” Farid Asasar, a member of the PUK Leadership Council, said Monday. “We don’t want to engage the ninth cabinet with problems.” Kirkuk has remained the sticking point between the Region’s two biggest parties. The Kurdistan Region has been run by a caretaker government for the past nine months. Erbil urgently needs a new cabinet to address relations with Baghdad, resolve outstanding issues on oil sales, agree its share of the federal budget, and solve territorial disputes. A new government would also reinvigorate the political and economic atmosphere in the Region as it emerges from the war with the Islamic State (ISIS) and a crippling financial crisis. Nechirvan Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Region, tasked his cousin Masrour with forming the new KRG cabinet on June 12. The former-chancellor of the Kurdistan Region Security Council has until July 12 to form his cabinet. The Kurdish parliament takes its summer recess on July 1, so time is of the essence to vote on the new cabinet. The Kurdistan Region held parliamentary elections on September 30, 2018, with the ruling KDP winning 45 seats in the 111-seat legislature. The PUK won 21 seats, and the Change Movement (Gorran) 12. No party won an outright majority to form the government alone, forcing the KDP to negotiate a coalition deal with its nearest rivals, the PUK and Gorran.
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