ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A delegation of Iraqi parliament bloc leaders is set to visit the Kurdistan Region on Sunday to meet with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) officials, aiming to persuade the party to resume participation in parliament sessions, a lawmaker said.
Last week, the KDP announced it would boycott all future legislative sessions until further notice, following parliament’s decision to proceed with a session that saw the election of Nizar Amedi, from its rival the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), as president despite KDP opposition.
KDP lawmaker Danar Abdulghafar confirmed to Rudaw that the delegation will arrive in Erbil on Sunday, adding that they seek the return of the powerful Kurdish party to the Iraqi parliament’s sessions.
"The KDP is an influential force and important to the political process. Therefore, the boycott and non-participation directly affects Iraq's political process,” Raad al-Dahlaki, a member of the delegation and a senior figure in the Sunni Azm Alliance, told Rudaw on Saturday.
He said the delegation is set to meet with the KDP bloc and later with its leader, President Masoud Barzani.
Rudaw has learned that some members of the delegation have already arrived in Erbil and are awaiting the arrival of the main delegation from Baghdad.
Ali Khalis, another KDP lawmaker, told Rudaw, “Until the party leadership decides, they will not return to Baghdad."
Following Amedi’s election, the KDP said it rejects “the manner” in which he was chosen. “We do not recognize anyone designated in that manner as a representative of the Kurdistan majority and will not deal with them,” the party said in a statement at the time.
Sherwan Dubardani, a KDP lawmaker, told Rudaw before the session that “the session is fundamentally illegal because, according to Article 37 of the Parliament’s by-laws, the speaker and both deputy speakers must approve the session’s agenda.” Farhad Atroushi, a deputy speaker of parliament from the KDP, also rejected the session.
Under Iraq’s informal power-sharing system, the presidency is allocated to the Kurds, the parliamentary speakership to Sunni Arabs, and the premiership to Shiite parties.
The visit by the heads of parliamentary blocs comes as the ruling Shiite Coordination Framework has yet to agree on a unified candidate for the powerful post of prime minister. They are expected to announce a new nominee later on Saturday, when the 15-day deadline expires.
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