ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - More than 100 signatures have been collected in the Iraqi parliament in support of freezing provincial councils in a bid to reduce government spending, a lawmaker said late Saturday, a move that could affect a power-sharing agreement among political factions in the disputed province of Kirkuk.
"There is an effort by a number of parliamentarians to collect signatures to freeze the provincial councils," Sumaya al-Khabouri from the Sunni-led Sovereignty Alliance told Rudaw’s Shko Omar. She added that the move does not include the dissolution of the councils as such a decision is not within the authority of the parliament.
The parliamentary push could have significant implications for Kirkuk, where political positions have traditionally been distributed among the province's main ethnic and political groups.
Elected in 2023, the 15-member Kirkuk provincial council initially elected Rebwar Taha, a nominee of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), as governor for two years.
Taha was replaced in April by Mohammed Samaan Agha of the Turkish-backed Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITF), under an earlier power-sharing agreement between the PUK, the ITF and several Sunni factions.
Under the agreement, the governor's post is to rotate among the participating factions. If the parliamentary effort succeeds in freezing the council, however, Samaan Agha could remain governor until the next provincial election, potentially disrupting the rotation agreed upon with the PUK in 2024.
Ahmed Kirkuki, a PUK member of the Kirkuk provincial council, told Rudaw English's Mohammed Kamaran that the petition was futile because it is “illegal and unconstitutional."
Hassan Majid, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) bloc in the council, also expressed doubts about the proposed move.
“What I know is that this cannot be done, especially for Kirkuk, because all changes here were made and decided upon within this council,” he said.
Ahmed Ramzi, head of the ITF bloc in the Kirkuk provincial council, also rejected the proposal.
"The existence of provincial councils is a constitutional matter, and the council members were elected through the will and votes of the street and the people, especially in Kirkuk. This step is incorrect and contrary to the law and the constitution," he said.
Samaan Agha, however, told Rudaw on Friday that he was prepared to transfer power smoothly when his term ends.
"We came to serve Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen and Christians," he said, adding that “whenever our duties are completed, we will hand it over democratically and easily."
The debate comes against a backdrop of previous legal disputes over the status of provincial councils in Iraq.
In 2023, the Federal Supreme Court revoked the mandates of provincial councils in the Kurdistan Region, which had been elected in 2014 and whose terms were extended by the Kurdistan Parliament in 2019. The court ruled that the extension was unconstitutional.
While the Iraqi parliament does not have the authority to dissolve provincial councils outright, it has previously suspended councils whose electoral terms had expired without new elections being held.
In 2019, the Federal Supreme Court upheld a parliamentary decision to suspend the operations of provincial councils whose electoral terms had long expired.
