Shafaq News/ The Iraqi legislative body is scheduled to meet on February 7 to vote for the republic's next president in an crucial step towards the formation of a new government after October's general election.
Per an unofficial agreement between Iraq's political parties, the post of president is held by a member of the Kurdish community, while the prime minister is a Shiite and the Parliament speaker a Sunni. Other government posts are also divided among the political parties based on their sectarian and ethnic background.
Unlike before, the Kurds have failed to agree on a presidential nominee because of profound divisions between the two leading parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).
A long-standing agreement among the Kurds stipulates that the president's post goes to the PUK while leaving the leadership of the Kurdistan region to the KDP.
However, that has changed as KDP swept the polls in the October 10 election, winning 31 seats in the 329-seat Parliament, while the Kurdistan Alliance, led by the rival PUK, secured only 17 seats.
The PUK has nominated the incumbent president, Barham Salih, for another four-year term, while KDP’s nominee is former foreign and finance minister Hoshyar Zebari.
Both are senior Kurdish politicians who have played a major role in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. They were leading figures in the Iraqi opposition before the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled the former dictator.
Salih served as deputy prime minister for two terms and as minister of planning in 2005, as well as prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
Zebari, a senior KDP official, formerly served as Iraq's First Minister of Foreign Affairs between 2005 and 2014. He was also a Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister between 2014 and 2016.
Among the other presidential contenders are possible comprise candidates, most notably former water resources minister Abdul-Latif Jamal Rasheed and Rizgar Mohammed Amin, the chief judge in one of Saddam’s trials.
In a statement to Shafaq News Agency, KDP member Eyad said that the Kurdish party that has a largest representation has the right to name the president. "In all the countries in the world, the democratic process is dictated by the electoral entitlements. If we take that into consideration, the KDP deserves to have the post."
"The KDP is not stripping the post from anyone. It believes that the democratic process decides. The legitimacy of the post is derived from the parliament's vote," he added.
"Since its establishment in 2003, the political process witnessed too many disagreements before and during the formation of every government. The current situation between the PUK and KDP is a democratic contest. It does not meet the criteria of disagreement as some might envisage."
Obsever Amir Ali attributed the current row between the two leading Kurdish parties to the defaulted structure of governance in the post-2003 era because the entitlements are set in accordance to "partisan rather than constitutional entitlements."
Ali said that the KDP and PUK shall resolve the disagreement in Erbil before heading to Baghdad. "since the post is entitled to the Kurds, it shall be settled inside the Region."
The Kurdish observer Ahmed Khalil said that the current situation might unfold into three scenarios.
"The first, one of the parties strikes an agreement with the largest Shiite bloc," Khalil told Shafaq News Agency, "the second, the Kurds agree amongst each other and they do not await any agreement with any Sunni or Shiite bloc."
"In the third scenario, external forces influence the political forces as in the previous terms," he concluded.
