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Iraqi Kurdistan a dictatorship? current president will break law, run for election again

 | عربي | کوردی

niqash | Hiwa Barznjy | Erbil | 25.04.2013

Elections will held in Iraqi Kurdistan in September. And despite the fact that local laws say he can’t, the current president may run for the job again. Local MPS are hatching several cunning plans to get around the law.

On April 18, the President of Iraqi Kurdistan Massoud Barzani, announced that parliamentary and presidential elections would be held in the semi autonomous region in September this year. And many others said that Barzani would also be running for President again, come September 21.

But there’s a problem there. According to current laws in the semi-autonomous region, the President of the region may only remain in power for two terms. A term is four years. And Barzani will complete his two terms in the middle of this year.

Yet many senior politicians in Iraqi Kurdistan – including the Barzani’s party, the Kurdistan Democratic Party’s spokesperson, Jafar Ibrahim Eminki - have said that they are trying to get around the law in order to allow Barzani to be nominated for a third term as President. Senior politicians from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan have also said that they don’t have anyone to replace Barzani.

Generally power is shared between two major parties in Iraqi Kurdistan - the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) – and in practice the region is basically split into two separate zones of influence, with local administrations in Erbil and Dohuk controlled by the KDP and the Sulaymaniyah area mostly administered by the PUK.

There are also opposition parties in the region, including the relatively influential Change Movement, also known as Goran, which is formed of many dissatisfied with the two major parties.

 And opposition parties in Iraqi Kurdistan responded with strong criticism to the idea that Barzani might be nominated for President again. In a joint press conference, the Change Movement and the region’s two major Islamic parties, said that trying to change the law to allow Barzani to remain in power was a step toward dictatorship in Iraqi Kurdistan and was a blatant disregard of the law.

“We don’t have any problems with Barzani as a person,” Aram Sheikh Muhammad, director of the elections office for the Change Movement, told NIQASH. “The problem is that the law doesn’t allow him to run for another term.”

The critics of the plan for Barzani to run again suspect that the KDP and PUK have various ideas to circumvent the current law. One sees legal experts interpreting the law in such a way that Barzani is able to run for election again.

Ali Awni, a senior member of the KDP, gave a clue as to how that plan might work. He told NIQASH that in 2005, when Barzani first became President of the region, there were no actual elections held. Barzani was never elected and he was appointed President by the local parliament, via  political agreement between the leading political parties in the region.  

“The President was elected by the people for the first time in 2009,” Awni explained to NIQASH. “So if he runs again it will only be for election for the second time.”

Awni added that as yet, Barzani himself hadn’t suggested that he run for President again. He said it was an issue that the opposition parties were talking about publicly in order to pre-empt any such thing happening. This was a violation of Barzani’s own rights and “it didn’t serve the public interests,” Awni noted.

The second way of allowing Barzani to run again would involve MPS belonging to the KDP and PUK going back to parliament to amend the law – the KDP and PUK have 59 out of 111 seats in the Iraqi Kurdish parliament.

However the latter could run into problems as it appears that not all the members of PUK like the idea of Barzani running again. “If Barzani wants to nominate himself again, then it must be under an amended law,” Arez Abdullah, a leading member of the PUK, said. “But if the law isn’t amended then Barzani cannot be nominated to run. But up until now nobody in the PUK has even discussed this with the KDP. If they approached us on this issue, then we’d make a public announcement of you r position.”

Meanwhile Bakhtyar Saeed, a local lawyer and political observer, says that if Barzani is eventually nominated to run for a third term, the conflicts that already exist between the two ruling parties and the opposition movement in Iraqi Kurdistan will only deepen.  

“Barzani has finished two terms and he cannot re-nominate himself,” Saeed confirmed. “But the KDP is not ready to give away this position at any price. They believe that if the opposition succeeds in preventing Barzani’s nomination, then they will lose a lot of power in a very short time. That’s something they will never accept.”

http://www.niqash.org/articles/?id=3209

Militants will start withdrawing from Turkey on May 8, PKK says

ISTANBUL – Hürriyet – 26.4.2013 – Senior PKK leaders in northern Iraq make a much-anticipated statement, announcing that militants will start pulling out from Turkey on May 8.


The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) will begin withdrawing from Turkish soil on May 8, according to Murat Karayılan, a senior leader at the group’s base in the Kandil Mountains of northern Iraq. Karayılan, however, told reporters yesterday that any military operation targeting the militants would delay the withdrawal and cause the militants to retaliate.

The PKK also released a number of suggestions to facilitate the withdrawal during the press conference, which was attended by high ranking PKK members Zeki Şengali and executive board member Hacer Zagros.

The PKK militants will use previously traveled routes during the withdrawal in an organized and disciplined while avoiding any clashes, the group said, according to Fırat news agency, which is known to have close ties to the organization.

According to the ongoing preparations, the withdrawal will start on May 8 and will continue in phases. The process will be finalized “as soon as possible” and in secrecy. The withdrawing militants will be deployed to “southern Kurdistan,” which refers to northern Iraq. Karayılan said they expected understanding from the Iraqi authorities, and particularly from the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The Turkish military should show a “similar sensitivity,” while avoiding any “provocative and opportunist attitudes” in northern Iraq, he added.

In the event of any military operations being conducted against the militants, the withdrawal will be halted and the militants will use the “legitimate right of defense” to retaliate, Karayılan said.

The leader did not disclose in his statement whether the militants would pull out with or without arms. Both Turkish President Abdullan Gül and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erodğan have insisted on a withdrawal without arms in repeated remarks, while the military is asking for a legal regulation for the process as it is legally obliged to fight against terrorism.

In a statement on April 22, the military said it would keep on fighting against terrorists. A number of other items that were mentioned in a letter to the jailed PKK leader, Abdullah Öcalan, and which are also known by the Turkish authorities, should also be considered, Karayılan said, without giving further details.

The last item in the list was related to observation by independent groups that could help spot problematic issues regarding the withdrawal. The resolution process, meanwhile, will take place in three phases, according to Karayılan, who named the withdrawal as the first stage.

The second stage is the efforts, mainly from the Turkish government and the state, for a permanent solution, he said. “With the reforms within the frame of a constitutional solution, the conditions for democratization in real terms and a solution to the Kurdish problem will emerge,” he said, calling for the abolition of the village guard system, support for the Turkish military and other “special war bodies.”

He also called for the new Constitution, which is currently being drafted under government auspices, to accord a place to the democratic rights, identity, beliefs and religious sects of Kurds. The third stage, which deals with “normalization,” would include freedom for Öcalan, according to Karayılan. “The disarmament of guerrillas will be brought to the agenda following the realization of this process, which will witness the liberation of everyone, including that of leader Öcalan,” Fırat quoted Karayılan as saying.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/militants-will-start-withdrawing-from-turkey-on-may-8-pkk-says.aspx?pageID=238&nID=45632&NewsCatID=338

Apologist for apartheid masquerades as human rights activist

Submitted by David Cronin on Tue, 04/23/2013 - 13:09

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Joëlle Fiss, a pro-Israel lobbyist who poses as a defender of human rights. 

 (European Parliament)

Last night I witnessed an attempt to cover Israel’s crimes against humanity with a veneer of respectability.

Joëlle Fiss is a pro-Israel lobbyist who masquerades as an anti-racist campaigner with Human Rights First, a group dedicated to “American ideals.” Based in New York, she is visiting Brussels this week to promote her new book Tiptoeing on Minefields.

The first speaking engagement of her trip wasorganized by D&D Consulting Services, an outfit headed by Dimitri Dombret, former secretary-general of European Friends of Israel. It took place yesterday.

As Fiss’s job title describes her as a “senior associate” with a “fighting discrimination” program, I felt it would be appropriate to solicit her views on Israel’s systematic discrimination against Palestinians. So I asked her during yesterday’s talk if she agreed that Israel was an apartheid state. Fiss replied that my question was “illegitimate.”

Evasion

“I don’t have discussions with my Palestinian friends” about whether or not Israel is an apartheid state, Fiss said, claiming that they prefer to discuss “checkpoints, refugee issues, the specifics, not generalities.” Her unnamed friends “don’t throw around that word [‘apartheid’]; they are extremely pragmatic, not dogmatic.”

Unwilling to tolerate this evasion, I then asked Fiss if — as a campaigner against discrimination — she was familiar with the UN’s official definition of apartheid, which refers to the domination of one racial or ethnic group over another. It is beyond dispute, I contended, that Jews are accorded more rights by the State of Israel than Palestinians. Fiss said she had no opinion on this matter.

Ironically, her book alludes to the lynchpin in Israel’s apartheid system: the Law of Return. Yet she merely mentions that this 1950 legislation declares that “every Jew has the right to return to his homeland.” Despite all the chats she has apparently conducted with “my Palestinian friends” on “refugee issues,” she does not explicitly acknowledge that Palestinians uprooted by Zionist forces two years earlier are denied the right to return to their homeland. This blatant injustice elicits no response from this purported expert on discrimination.

The 111-page book is influenced by Fiss’ previous job as an official in the European Parliament and her stint chairing the European Union of Jewish Students. Brief and readable, it is nonetheless more a work of propaganda than of intellectual exploration. Fiss, who holds British and Swiss citizenship, is moist-eyed about her devotion to both Israel and the EU. “Just like the EU, Israel represents a utopia to yearn for, as well as a concrete reality to live in,” she writes.

The main argument in her essay is that the Jewish diaspora should consider having a “citizen’s initiative.” It would be modelled on a provision in the EU’s Lisbon treaty, which theoretically allows ordinary people to shape the Union’s agenda if 1 million signatures are collected on a particular topic.

Hogwash

Fiss draws a clumsy parallel between how the Zionist movement “translated a covenant between the Jewish people that led to statehood” and a “constitutional process” in the EU that attempted to “create a tighter connection between its members and its peoples.”

This hogwash overlooks how the EU’s constitution has been rammed down the throats of the EU’s citizens. When French and Dutch voters rejected this blueprint for a militarized and neo-liberal Europe in 2005, it was repackaged and renamed the Lisbon treaty. Ireland was the only country which held a referendum on the revamped treaty; the Irish rejected it in 2008 but were bullied into voting “yes” when a second poll was held the following year.

(The title Tiptoeing on Minefields is, to put it mildly, unfortunate. Fiss concerns herself with metaphorical minefields — the prospect of the tame political ideas she toys with “exploding in your face.” Her beloved Israel, however, has created literal minefields — by, for example, littering large parts of Lebanon with cluster bombs in 2006).

Tomorrow Fiss, will be back in her old workplace, when she will address a breakfast meeting hosted by Frédérique Ries, a Belgian member of the European Parliament (MEP). Ries is a vice-chairwoman of European Friends of Israel, a cross-party alliance of MEPs.

I asked Ries why she was teaming up with a purported champion of human rights like Fiss, when she (Ries) routinely defends a state that denies an entire people its elementary rights. Ries did not reply.

ITF TURKEY REPRESENTATIVE DR. HICRAN KAZANCI CELEBRATING MESSAGE FOR THE 18TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE IRAQI TURKMEN FRONT

ITF TURKEY REPRESENTATIVE DR. HICRAN KAZANCI CELEBRATING MESSAGE FOR THE 18TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE IRAQI TURKMEN FRONT

We are celebrating the 18th anniversary of the Iraqi Turkmen Front which was founded on the 24th of April 1995 and is the largest organizational structure of the Turkmen.

Since the day of its establishment the Iraqi Turkmen Front has made major progress in defending the rights of the Iraqi Turkmen and eliminated all internal and external threats. Although it was over, the cyclical impact of the Cold War continued into the 1990’s. The Iraqi Turkmen Front has applied rational policies against the developments emerging from the cyclical impact of the Cold War and has been successful in keeping the rights of the Turkmen on both the national as well as international platforms.

The Iraqi Turkmen Front maintained its stand of prioritizing the interests of the Turkmen community and continued on its path also after the new structuring emerging in the region after 2003. Today countries which are within the parenthesis of global forces which are driving regional conflicts centered in Iraq are carrying out a power play in Iraq.

Today attacks and plots against Turkmen, particularly centered on Turkmeneli region, continue in Iraq. These conspiracies are targeting the Iraqi Turkmen Front. However, the Iraqi Turkmen Front which is empowered by the nation is strong enough to overcome these troubles as it has in the past and as it will in the future. With its 18 year history in politics and significant experience, the Iraqi Turkmen Front shall continue to generate strategies for the cyclical protection of the interests of the Turkmen community.

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Iraq 10 years on: Are the taps flowing?

Iraq 10 years on: Are the taps flowing?

BAGHDAD/DUBAI, 22 April 2013 (IRIN) - For much of the past decade, Iraqis have cursed about two things: 'maya' and 'kahraba' - water and electricity.

These are more than petty complaints; they have become a benchmark by which Iraqis judge progress in their country. A recent survey by the National Democratic Institute (NDI) [ http://www.ndi.org/files/NDI-Iraq%20-%20April%202012%20National%20Survey%20-%20Report.pdf

 ] found that 42 percent of 2,000 Iraqis surveyed considered basic services - like water and electricity - among the top two concerns they want the current government to address.

In 2011, more than one-quarter of the population had access to water from the general network for less than two hours a day, and nearly half the population rated the quality of water services in their area as bad or very bad, according to the Iraq Knowledge Network (IKN) [ http://www.iauiraq.org/documents/1677/IKN_Introduction_en.pdf ], a survey of nearly 30,000 households  conducted by the Ministry of Planning's Central Statistics Organization, the Kurdistan Regional Statistics Office and the UN.

According to the UN, most Iraqis have limited access to clean water because of poor infrastructure maintenance and inadequate funding of the water supply system. One-fifth of Iraqis relied on bottled water as their main source of water, and only one-fifth of people had access to water from the general network all day long, the 2011 IKN survey found. The state of disrepair forced significant numbers of people into using river water, despite the health risks, IRIN reported in 2007 [ http://www.irinnews.org/Report/70243/IRAQ-Water-shortage-leads-people-to-drink-from-rivers

 ].

Still, statistics appear to show that access to clean water has improved in the last decade.

ORSAM Report No: 153 Electoral Laws in Iraq

http://www.orsam.org.tr/en/enUploads/Article/Files/2013422_153.pdf

ORSAM Report No: 153 Electoral Laws in Iraq

ORSAM -

After the 2003 U.S. invasion, a new system has been  strived to be established in Iraq. Within this system, it was aimed to create a country ruled by  governments through elections, which is one of the essential principles of democracy. To that  end; constituent assembly elections to prepare  the Iraqi Constitution were held on 30 January 2005,  Constitutional referendum was held on 15 October  2005, local and general elections were held on 15  December 2005, local elections and general  elections were held respectively on 31 January 2009  and on 7 March 2010. In the forthcoming two years,  it is planned to hold two more elections in Iraq.  In the first place, local elections will be carried out  on 20 April 2013. Then, general elections are  expected to be held in 2014.        Considering the federal structure in Iraq, the local  elections are such as to shape the Iraqi politics.  The local elections will be a key to general elections  to be carried out in 2014. Within  this report,  Arabic texts of laws on local elections in Iraq,  as well as their Turkish translations can be found.  Hasan Kanbolat, ORSAM Director

Full text

Cult of the Chameleon - documentary by Iranian filmaker Maziar Bahari on the Mujahedin-e Khalq

A documentary by Iranian filmaker Maziar Bahari on the Mujahedin-e Khalq, a designated U.S. foreign terrorist organization. 

Massoud Rajavi is the leader of this bizarre Iranian Cult who over the years helped Ayatollah Khomeini overthow the Shah, then declared war on the Islamic Republic ruthlessly killing their fellow countrymen. They allied themselves with Saddam Hussein but now that he is gone are ardent supporters of the coalition. The MEK has switched allegiances so often that any underlying ideology is long gone. 

Now the MEK is on the verge of getting off the U.S. list of terrorist organizations as a result of a multi-million dollar media & lobbying blitz.