ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A parliamentary session scheduled for Tuesday to elect Iraq’s next president has been postponed until the end of the week, Baghdad’s foreign minister confirmed to Rudaw, as Kurdish parties have yet to agree on a unified nominee for the post traditionally reserved for Kurds.
In a Monday interview with Rudaw, Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein stated, “The parliamentary session scheduled for tomorrow [Tuesday] to elect a president for Iraq will not take place and has been postponed to next Sunday.”
The Iraqi parliament was scheduled to convene on Tuesday to elect the country’s fifth Kurdish president. Eighteen candidates, both Kurdish and Arab, are contesting the position, but the likely winner is expected to come from the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), or a unified nominee supported by both parties.
Iraq held early legislative elections on November 9, followed by general voting on November 11. The final results were announced in mid-November and ratified by the country’s highest judicial authority, the Federal Supreme Court, in mid-December.
Since 2003, an informal power-sharing system has allocated the parliament’s speakership to Sunni Arabs, the premiership to Shiite parties, and the presidency to the Kurds.
The Iraqi legislature convened on December 29 to elect its speaker and two deputies. Under Iraq’s constitution, the president must be elected within 30 days of the first parliamentary session. Once sworn in, the elected president has up to 15 days to task the nominee of the largest parliamentary bloc with forming a government.
Following the announcement of Iraq’s legislative election results in mid-November, Iraq’s ruling Shiite Coordination Framework declared it had formed the largest bloc in the incoming parliament, a crucial step toward selecting the country’s next prime minister.
The Coordination Framework said on Monday that it held separate meetings with delegations from both the KDP and PUK, urging the parties to reach “an agreement that allows the president to be elected within the constitutionally specified date” and stressing “the need to respect constitutional timelines and finalize national entitlements.”
The constellation of Shiite parties on Saturday nominated Nouri al-Maliki, former Iraqi prime minister (2006-2014) and head of the State of Law coalition, as its candidate for premiership.