ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The next Kurdistan Regional Government's priority should be to decentralize authority to provincial councils, according to deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani, who argued the post-2014 crises forced Erbil to make reforms.
"The decentralization of power has to be the priority of the next government and there should be a strong monitoring on the decentralized powers so as to know how they are managed," Talabani said.
He was speaking during a panel entitled ‘Reforming the governing system: Decentralisation and institutionalisation in Iraq’ at the Middle East Research Institute - Kurdistan (MERI-K) 2018 Forum in Erbil on Tuesday.
Accomplishing such reform "would become a tough responsibility on the shoulders of the government and parliament,” added Talabani who won the most votes of any single candidate in the KRG parliamentary election on September 30.
The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) list head described the governing system in the KRG as complicated.
"In the Kurdistan Region, we have a lot of layers of authority... this itself creates some complications," he said.
The Kurdistan Region is yet to ratify a constitution. According to the Iraqi constitution, regional law can trump federal law when there are disagreements. Due to inaction in Baghdad, many laws applied in the Kurdistan Region are based on pre-2005 Iraqi cases.
"We have exported some of them from Baghdad and some others we have created here. When we talk about the decentralization of power, we have to realize that there are many types of authority,” explained Talabani.
He believes the Kurdistan Region, whose previous parliament was largely unproductive, would be better served with more powers distributed at the city and provincial levels.
“Though I am for the financial and administrative decentralization of authority from the Council of Ministers to the ministries and from the ministries for major departments and from them to other departments, but that has to be reorganized in-line with the authorities of the mayorships and provinces."
Without specifying, he argued some provinces in Iraq have been successful in decentralizing powers. Talabani and Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani have championed reform in the Kurdistan Region. They have worked to make the energy sector more transparent. The United States announced the Iraqi Governance Performance and Accountability (IGPA) program through USAID in Erbil in March. Washington allocated $22.4 million for Erbil.
"This kind of reorganization requires expertise whether locally, regionally or internationally. We have spoken with many countries and they have shown willingness to help us in this regard,” said Talabani.
As part of its crisis management plan, the KRG took a series of grassroots reforms within the government over the past four years which mainly included austerity measures such as a biometric system to digitize its payroll and end duplicate names. The KRG also started going paperless with a services portal on the web, with the aim of reducing bureaucracy.
"With an economic recovery, which is better now, with the improvement of relations between Baghdad and Erbil, which I feel has happened, we do not have to slow down in what we were doing for reform so the government institutions can practically operate,” implored Talabani.
Talabani interactively used social media as a campaign tool, fielding random questions from sports to politics to hard and soft social issues. He said the people of the Kurdistan Region want action from the government and "they are tired of all the political rhetoric which gripped the people in the past eight years."
Talabani, who lost his father Jalal Talabani a former Iraqi president who was known for his ability to reach common ground, described the outgoing government's tenure as "tough.”
"From the Kurdistan Regional Government, we passed four tough years which were full of crises, problems and war, which were enough to collapse a government, but with the support of our people and the leaders who dealt with the situation responsibly, we made it and helped the government stand on its feet,” said Qubad Talabani.
The tough circumstances forced the KRG to be introspective.
"The crises forced us to touch upon genuine reforms and had not been for these crises, the government would have unlikely started these reforms," he said.
The ISIS conflict, an influx of 1.8 million IDPs and refugees, a global drop in oil prices, the events of October 16, loss of 300,000 bopd from Kirkuk, loss of disputed areas, political feuds, and budget-share disputes with Baghdad plagued the previous government.
