ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Rakan al-Jabouri, acting governor of Kirkuk, was sworn in before the local court on Wednesday to preside over the upcoming provincial council meeting.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani on Tuesday called upon the newly elected members of the Kirkuk provincial council to hold a meeting on Thursday headed by its eldest member.
“With Rakan Jabouri swearing in, as the eldest member of the council, he will lead the meeting, but he will not stay in the governor position, and there will be an administrative vacuum,” Parwin Fatih, a Kurdish council member, told Rudaw.
Jabouri, a Sunni politician and head of the Arab coalition, has served as Kirkuk’s acting governor for the past six years. Had Jabouri not sworn in, Fatih would have chaired the meeting.
Fatih, also a member of Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), said that the selection of the head of the council and the deputies will remain for a later stage.
Kirkuk held provincial council elections last 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, the selection of a governor, and filling the positions on the council.
Iraqi PM Sudani has presided over three meetings attended by the political parties who have representation in the council in the disputed or Article 140 province.
Kurdish parties won seven seats - five to the PUK and two to the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). A coalition of three Arab parties won six seats. The minority Christian quota seat was taken by a candidate close to pro-Iran Shiite militia groups and the PUK.
Since the fall of the Ba’athist regime in 2003, Kurds and Arabs have dominated the top post. The governor was a Kurd until October 2017 when the federal forces returned to the province after the Kurdistan Region’s independence referendum and appointed Jabouri as acting governor. The city has never had a governor from the Turkmen community.
CORRECTION: This article was initially titled "Former acting governor Jabouri to head Kirkuk provincial council meeting"
By Didar Abdalrahman
