SULAIMANI (ESTA) — The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) candidate for the position of Iraqi president is Barham Salih, a party’s lawmaker said on Monday.
“The PUK has only one candidate and that is Barham Salih,” lawmaker Harem Kamal Agha told Esta Media Network.
The positions of the three Iraqi presidencies are divided among Shias, Sunnis and Kurds, according to a long-standing agreement. Kurds get the presidency, Shias get the position of prime minister and Sunnis get the parliament’s speaker.
The PUK lawmaker’s comments came after a Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) parliamentarian said the two parties had agreed to nominate two PUK candidates for the position of Iraqi presidency.
Kamal Agha rejected the KDP lawmaker’s remarks, stressing that the party has one candidate for the position.
On Sunday, lawmakers re-elected Mohammed al-Halbousi, a Sunni leader of Taqaddum Alliance, as the speaker of parliament.
Lawmakers also voted to choose Hakim Zamli as first deputy speaker and Shakhawan Abdulla as the second deputy.
Parliament also has 30 days from the first session to elect the country’s new president, who will then ask the largest bloc in parliament to form a government.
Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr emerged as the big winner of the October 10 polls, which were held several months early as a concession to a pro-democracy protest movement.
His movement, which ran after he reversed an initial election boycott call, won 73 of the 329 seats.
Sadr’s pro-Iranian rivals in the Conquest Alliance, the political wing of the pro-Iran ex-paramilitary coalition Hashid al-Shaabi, won only 17 seats in the election, compared to 48 in the previous parliament.
*This story was updated at 1:47 p.m. EBL time
