GottaDash
07-24-2008, 05:26 PM
This one's for you Cowpoke. Where's that handy map of yours??? -Dash
By Azad Aslan (The Kurdish Globe) -raq's Parliament passed a provincial elections bill last Tuesday despite the strong protest of Kurdish lawmakers over how to deal with the disputed oil city of Kirkuk. Kurds make up one of three main groups in Iraqi Parliament, and their boycott of the vote means the bill could be sent back to Parliament by the presidency.
"We cannot have a vote with an absence of a whole faction. The vote is useless. It will be rejected by the representatives of this bloc and by the presidency council," said Deputy Parliamentary Speaker Khalid al-Attiya.
Iraqi Parliament decided to postpone the vote and add another article that purports each ethnic or sectarian group receives a set allocation of seats and voting is between individual candidates from those groups. Kurds, , ,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Arabs, and Turkmen get 10 seats each. Minority Christians get 2. This article was unacceptable for the Kurds. "We walked out because of the illegality of this article and because the speaker wanted a secret vote, which is not constitutional," said Fouad Masoum, head of the Kurdish bloc.
Both Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the U.S. want the election to take place on October 1, as they think it would speed up the reconciliation process in Iraq. The Electoral Commission, however, says it will not have time to organize it by then, even with the law in place. Faraj al-Haidari, head of the commission, told Reuters on Tuesday he could not start implementing the election law until it was approved by the presidency council.
Despite the understood hurriedness of al-Maliki and the U.S. on the passing of the provincial elections law, the attitude of Iraqi Parliament last Tuesday cannot be acceptable and has brought all Kurdish and Arab relations into question. The territorial integrity and national unity of Iraq, at least since the fall of Saddam, has mainly been thanks to Kurdish political actors' decisions to remain within Iraq. Despite this sincere Kurdish political position, it seems that Iraqi Arabs and their political actors still act and think as if the Kurds are second-class citizens and not equal partners in political games.
The so-called problematic question of Kirkuk was and still is indeed a simple one if political actors in Iraq act sincerely and abide by the Iraqi Constitution, which was ratified by an overall majority of Iraqi people. The Constitution prepared the road map for the solution of the Kirkuk question through a referendum. This, for so many unholy reasons, has been postponed, and the Constitution was not implemented.
The current deadlock over the law resulted mainly due to a dispute over what to do about voting in multi-ethnic Kirkuk, where a dispute is simmering between Kurds who say the city should belong to the largely autonomous Kurdistan Region and Arabs who want it to stay under central government authority.
The central question is what should the Kurds do now? It is time that Kurdish political actors send a serious message to the Iraqi people, to the region, and to the international community that they can walk away from Baghdad and return to Kurdistan and let the people of Kurdistan decide what should be done. This requires high-profile Kurdish politicians such as Jalal Talabani and Hoshyar Zebari and others to leave their posts and return to their people.
Without Kurdish participation, the political and territorial integrity of Iraq is impossible. Reconstruction of a democratic, plural, and federal Iraq requires the active participation of Kurds. Kurds should not be cemented in the construction of an Iraq that is not democratic, plural, and federal. Kurdish political actors should realize that leaving Baghdad would not be a disaster but giving up on Kirkuk will be a catastrophe.
http://www.peyamner.com/details.aspx?l=4&id=70309
By Azad Aslan (The Kurdish Globe) -raq's Parliament passed a provincial elections bill last Tuesday despite the strong protest of Kurdish lawmakers over how to deal with the disputed oil city of Kirkuk. Kurds make up one of three main groups in Iraqi Parliament, and their boycott of the vote means the bill could be sent back to Parliament by the presidency.
"We cannot have a vote with an absence of a whole faction. The vote is useless. It will be rejected by the representatives of this bloc and by the presidency council," said Deputy Parliamentary Speaker Khalid al-Attiya.
Iraqi Parliament decided to postpone the vote and add another article that purports each ethnic or sectarian group receives a set allocation of seats and voting is between individual candidates from those groups. Kurds, , ,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Arabs, and Turkmen get 10 seats each. Minority Christians get 2. This article was unacceptable for the Kurds. "We walked out because of the illegality of this article and because the speaker wanted a secret vote, which is not constitutional," said Fouad Masoum, head of the Kurdish bloc.
Both Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the U.S. want the election to take place on October 1, as they think it would speed up the reconciliation process in Iraq. The Electoral Commission, however, says it will not have time to organize it by then, even with the law in place. Faraj al-Haidari, head of the commission, told Reuters on Tuesday he could not start implementing the election law until it was approved by the presidency council.
Despite the understood hurriedness of al-Maliki and the U.S. on the passing of the provincial elections law, the attitude of Iraqi Parliament last Tuesday cannot be acceptable and has brought all Kurdish and Arab relations into question. The territorial integrity and national unity of Iraq, at least since the fall of Saddam, has mainly been thanks to Kurdish political actors' decisions to remain within Iraq. Despite this sincere Kurdish political position, it seems that Iraqi Arabs and their political actors still act and think as if the Kurds are second-class citizens and not equal partners in political games.
The so-called problematic question of Kirkuk was and still is indeed a simple one if political actors in Iraq act sincerely and abide by the Iraqi Constitution, which was ratified by an overall majority of Iraqi people. The Constitution prepared the road map for the solution of the Kirkuk question through a referendum. This, for so many unholy reasons, has been postponed, and the Constitution was not implemented.
The current deadlock over the law resulted mainly due to a dispute over what to do about voting in multi-ethnic Kirkuk, where a dispute is simmering between Kurds who say the city should belong to the largely autonomous Kurdistan Region and Arabs who want it to stay under central government authority.
The central question is what should the Kurds do now? It is time that Kurdish political actors send a serious message to the Iraqi people, to the region, and to the international community that they can walk away from Baghdad and return to Kurdistan and let the people of Kurdistan decide what should be done. This requires high-profile Kurdish politicians such as Jalal Talabani and Hoshyar Zebari and others to leave their posts and return to their people.
Without Kurdish participation, the political and territorial integrity of Iraq is impossible. Reconstruction of a democratic, plural, and federal Iraq requires the active participation of Kurds. Kurds should not be cemented in the construction of an Iraq that is not democratic, plural, and federal. Kurdish political actors should realize that leaving Baghdad would not be a disaster but giving up on Kirkuk will be a catastrophe.
http://www.peyamner.com/details.aspx?l=4&id=70309