ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Kirkuk’s provincial council is set to hold a meeting following Eid al-Adha holidays next week, marking the first meeting of the body since its members were elected around six months ago, a councilor told Rudaw on Sunday.
Kirkuk held provincial council elections in December, but the absence of a clear majority and disagreements between the multi-ethnic province’s different components have blocked the formation of the local administration.
“There is an agreement between all the parties of the provincial council. The meeting was initially set for before Eid al-Adha, but due to the fact that some councilors are away to perform Hajj and cannot attend the meeting, it was postponed to after the holidays,” Ahmed Kirkuki, a member of the council, told Rudaw’s Hemin Baban Rahim, adding that a specific date has yet to be set.
Azzam al-Hamdani, spokesperson of the al-Uruba alliance, also stated that the council is expected to meet after the holidays, stressing that the process of forming the local administration must not be delayed any further.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani in late May chaired a meeting between Kirkuk’s political parties, during which they agreed to hold a provincial council session within an agreed-upon timeframe, but did not publicly specify a date.
Once the meeting is held, the parties will have two weeks to form the local administration, based on what was agreed upon during the meeting with Sudani, according to Kirkuki.
The Arab Alliance, Uruba Alliance, and Qiyada Alliance won a combined six seats during the December elections, giving Arabs the second-highest number of seats after the Kurds, who obtained seven spots on the 16-seat council - five for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and two for the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).
As the party with the most seats on the council, the PUK believes that it has the right to claim the governorship of the oil-rich province. The Arab parties are determined to keep the highly-coveted post which they have held since 2017, while the Turkmens have called for the position to be rotated between all three components.
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