Legal institutions in Iraq are used for political rulings: PM Barzani tells Davos panel

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Prime Minister Masrour Barzani stressed the importance of the Iraqi constitution for the Kurdistan Region during a panel titled 'A New Security Architecture in the Middle East' at the 2022 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday.

The prime minister participated in the panel alongside the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Jordan.

In response to a question about the recent rocket attacks targeting the Kurdistan Region, Prime Minister Barzani said the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and the Middle East need to "look beyond just one particular incident and look at the security of the region as a whole and see what is going on as the attacks are the result of lack of understanding and sometimes the ambitions of some countries and influence in the affairs of other countries."

Following the October 2021 Iraqi parliamentary elections, the victors could not form a government because in Iraq, unlike most countries in the world, "unless you have two-thirds of the parliament votes, you are unable to form the government," Barzani explained.

"The attack could also be interpreted as a pressure on the members of the trilateral alliance that was formed between the Kurds, Sunnis, and the Sadrists to withdraw from the alliance, and that the increasing influence in the country will continue," Barzani added.

Limiting such attacks, Barzani contends, "requires collective efforts by all the members in the region" and "the support of the international community, the United States, Europe, and every country that has a stake and interest in the region."

"In Iraq, we are trying to regain the independence of the decision-making process in the country," the prime minister said, adding that there hasn't been major action taken "to put Iraq back on its track so it can defend itself and it can defend its sovereignty so it won't be an open ground for missile attacks or political gains between different parties."

During the panel, Prime Minister Barzani was asked about the oil issue between Erbil and Baghdad and the threat posed by Iran-backed militias throughout the region.

"Looking into the security of Iraq and everything that we have been talking about from oil, ISIS, and before it was Al-Qaeda, we have to look at the reasons why these problems emerge in the first place," he said. "In Iraq, there have been many wrong political decisions that have led to the creation of these sort of problems, including the oil crisis that we have today."

The prime minister also stressed that the neglect and lack of respect for the constitution "is one of the reasons, poverty, injustice, inequality and bad governance in the country led to the rise of many of these problems."

"Iraq is very heavily influenced by outsiders and external factors, and it is very important for all of the friends of Iraq to try to make sure that the Iraqis are the masters of their own destiny," he said.

Barzani argued that these problems can be limited when Iraq's sovereignty is respected and "the constitution is respected, which is a package of compromise amongst all the different communities in the country."

"Unfortunately, the constitution is ignored, and many of its articles that are very important to different communities in the country, and these are creating these kinds of problems, ethnic cleansing for instance, which led some of those communities to corporate with terrorist organizations, Al-Qaeda before and ISIS now," he said. "And even today, these political decisions are made using the federal court to pass political rulings in the name of a legal institution, and it's not going to solve anything, and it will complicate the situation."

The Iraqi Federal Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that the Kurdistan Region's oil and gas law was unconstitutional, a claim that Erbil has repeatedly rejected by citing the constitution.

Asked whether the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) will abide by that ruling, Barzani responded by pointing out that "the four authorities in the KRG, the presidency, the government, the judiciary, and the parliament have rejected the ruling because we think this is a political ruling and not a constitutional ruling made by a so-called legal institution."

The ruling, he added, "violates our constitutional rights."

"To us, the constitution goes above any court ruling, and we are definitely going to abide by the constitution, respect the constitution, fulfill our duties, but also demand our rights the way they are stipulated in the constitution," Prime Minister Barzani concluded.