Kurdish parties examine direct provincial dealing with Baghdad, most against it

SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region—Kurdish members of the Iraqi parliament have each denied that their party was behind a proposal that suggested Kurdish provinces must from now on deal directly with Baghdad for finances and bypass the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Erbil.

“That proposal has not been made or discussed among Kurdish MPs in Baghdad and it was a personal initiative of a few MPs,” Muthana Amin, an MP representing the Kurdistan Islamic Union in Baghdad told Rudaw.

Speaking at a panel on Rudaw TV with fellow MPs from other parties, Amin said that the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi “has not paid 700 million IQD he owes Halabja and the cost of the treatment of 300 victims for more than two years for which I have asked him personally, now how can we persuade him to cover millions of dollars a month for Kurdistan?”

Amid protests by teachers in Sulaimani against unpaid wages last week, some MPs of the Change Movement (Gorran) said they suggested the province to deal with the central government directly for its monthly budget and bypass Erbil.

The Gorran MPs shared their idea on TV and in party-affiliated newspapers, which brought them a lot of criticism, mainly from the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).

Khasraw Goran, head of the KDP MPs in Baghdad said that the issue between Baghdad and Erbil is political before it is economic “and that is clear to all,”

He said that since the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime Kurdistan Region has never got its full share of 17 per cent of the budget.

He called any attempt to deal with Baghdad directly illegal and unconstitutional.

Also on Thursday, the spokesperson for the Iraqi prime minister Saad al-Hadithi told Rudaw that the federal government would only deal with the KRG and not with individual provinces.

Farid Asasard, a leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) explained that his party had only once raised the idea among its leaders but it was never a concrete project “as might be other and better solutions to seek with Baghdad.”

“An idea such as that has to be evaluated and examined by all parties and if they agree on it as a solution then as the PUK we will support it, too.”

Asasard added meanwhile that his party will oppose any proposal that may detrimental to the Kurdistan Region’s status as an autonomous region and that any mention of it now has only to do with the reality of now.

Kawa Muhammad, head of Gorran’s MPs in Baghdad said that his colleagues never meant that Kurdish provinces should deal with Baghdad separately, but “the idea is something real and has to be examined and proposed as it is,”

“We just worry that people’s situation might remain as it has been for a few years and never get resolved,” he said.

Muhammad said “We would hope to entrench this idea into the budgetary law and make sure each province would have the right to deal directly with Baghdad if Erbil failed to honor its agreements with the central government and vice versa.”