Kurdistan
Dilshad Shahab, senior advisor to Kurdistan Region's President Nechirvan Barzani, speaking to Rudaw on September 1, 2022. Photo: Screenshot/Rudaw
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Efforts toward drafting the Kurdistan Region’s constitution have been repeatedly hindered due to disagreements between political parties, a senior presidential advisor told Rudaw on Thursday.
Dilshad Shahab, an advisor to Kurdistan Region's President Nechirvan Barzani, addressed the renewed attempts from the President to write up the Region’s constitution, a goal the Region has highly sought since the drafting of the 2005 Iraqi constitution.
“The attempts towards drafting a constitution are not anything new. In previous stages, there have been several attempts, but unfortunately, they have not reached a conclusion due to political disagreements,” Shahab told Rudaw’s Shaho Amin.
A draft of a Kurdistan Region constitution, written by academics and legal experts, was submitted to the Kurdistan parliament in 2009 but was never passed due to disputes over certain articles.
President Barzani asked the parliament and Council of Ministers to form a committee to finalize the constitution last year, Shahab said. Several meetings were also held but yielded no results.
Two years after the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the US, the majority of Arabs, Kurds, and others voted for a constitution for the country.
Kurdish political parties have been struggling to agree on a constitution since then.
“The President of the Kurdistan Region [Barzani] believes that a part of these issues that always become a reason for political disagreements is because of a lack of a constitution,” said the senior advisor.
The Kurdistan Region currently relies on a series of laws, instructions, and norms as a substitution for the constitution. It also heavily relies on the Iraqi constitution for numerous issues, especially those related to crime.
Shahab’s remarks come as the set date for the Region’s parliamentary elections nears.
However, the senior advisor said extending the current legislature’s duration could be used to work on passing the constitution.
President Barzani initially announced October 1 as the date for the Region’s parliamentary elections, yet disagreements between the political parties over the current commission and election laws have made it very unlikely for the process to take place on the previously designated date.
The Deputy Speaker of the Kurdistan parliament Hemin Hawramy in July said the upcoming elections are unlikely to be held on time.
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