ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Former acting Governor of Kirkuk Rakan al-Jabouri said in a video statement late Saturday that the provincial council’s special meeting in Baghdad was a “historic insult” to the Arab component, stating that they will take legal measures to object the outcomes of the session.
Nine out of the 16 members of the Kirkuk provincial council held a meeting in Baghdad’s al-Rasheed hotel on Saturday evening, hours before the legal timeframe to form the province’s local administration was set to end.
In the meeting, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan’s (PUK) Rebwar Taha was nominated for the governorship of Kirkuk, and Mohammed Ibrahim al-Hafidh of the Qiyada Alliance, an Arab party, was nominated for the post of council chief.
“We will use all legal and judicial measures to obtain our entitlements,” said Jabouri, who served as the council’s chief in the first meeting as the eldest member of the body, claiming that the session did not meet the legal requirements as no request was filed to the head of the council to hold the meeting, the session was announced on the media rather than through official correspondence, and it was held outside of the province even though there are no legal or security obstacles to holding it in Kirkuk.
All five PUK council members, three Arab members, and the winner of the Christian minority quota were in attendance. No council members of the Turkmen, Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), or Jabouri’s Arab Alliance were present.
“What happened today was an exclusion and outcasting of the representatives of the Arab Alliance… we were not informed to attend this session,” he added, stating that the Arab council members who attended the meeting had committed a “treason” towards their community.
The Arab Alliance, Uruba Alliance, and Qiyada Alliance won a combined six seats, giving Arabs the second-highest number of seats after the Kurds, who obtained seven spots on the 16-seat council.
The council’s Arab bloc said that they reject any session of the body which does not include representatives of all of the winning parties and components, in a statement posted hours before the meeting at al-Rasheed. All six Arab council members signed the statement, three of whom later attended the session.
Jabouri added that the Turkmens, “a main component of this city,” also were excluded and their legal entitlement to be included in forming the local administration of Kirkuk were disregarded. No Turkmen council members were present at the meeting in Baghdad, nor were they given any senior positions. This could leave the nominations open to a challenge.
The absence of a clear majority after the December polls and disputes between the parties hindered the process of appointing the governor and forming the local administration for over seven months. Kirkuk is the only Iraqi province yet to finalize its government.
Because of Kirkuk’s status as a multi-ethnic, disputed province with a history of demographic change, the election law dictates that “power shall be distributed in a fair representation which guarantees the participation of the province’s components regardless of the results of the elections.”
Nominations for governors must be approved by the Iraqi president.