Activist reveals that Kurdish MP in Iraqi parliament misrepresented credentials during Iraqi election
A Kurdish lawmaker in the Iraqi parliament was revealed to have misrepresented his credentials during the 2018 national elections, publicly promoting to the electorate fraudulent claims about his qualifications.
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – A Kurdish lawmaker in the Iraqi parliament was revealed to have misrepresented his credentials during the 2018 national elections, publicly promoting to the electorate fraudulent claims about his qualifications.
Sarkawt Shamsuddin was a member of the newly formed New Generation party in 2018, when he ran for office. However, a year later, there was a falling out with the group’s vocal leader, Shaswar Abdulwahid. All four New Generation lawmakers in the Iraqi legislature broke with him and rebranded themselves in mid-2019 as the “Future” bloc.
In the 2018 Iraqi national elections, Shamsuddin claimed to have earned a master’s degree. He also claimed that he had worked as an advisor to the US diplomatic mission in Iraq.
However, those credentials have been recently challenged, following the revelation that only now has he received his master’s degree.
The challenge was precipitated by the end of the US academic year, as students graduated from college and received their degrees. Ironically, the revelation came from someone who was wishing Shamsuddin well—but who was ignorant of his earlier claim.
“Well done to @MPSarkawtShams on completing his masters at @VTSPIA,” Ariel I. Ahram, an associate professor at Virginia Tech’s School of Public and International Affairs, tweeted. “An #Iraqi parliamentarian writing on electoral reform in his native country, turning theory directly into practice.”
Yerevan Saeed, a political activist studying for his Ph.D. in another school in Washington DC, understood the significance of the tweet from Shamsuddin’s professor, and Saeed responded accordingly.
Saeed posted a screenshot of a New Generation Facebook post from the 2018 election campaign with a graphic outlining the would-be lawmaker’s achievements. In the post, the New Generation claimed that the party’s top candidate had a “master’s degree in Global Governance and Security.”
Shamsuddin, “who has promoted himself as a voice of anti-corruption & ran his campaign on such platform,” Saeed tweeted, “duped & defrauded voters, Iraqi people, Iraqi electoral commission & his university by claiming he had a Master’s degree from Virginia tech in 2018.”
Saeed also responded to a second claim that Shamsuddin made about his credentials during the 2018 Iraqi electoral campaign.
Shamsuddin claimed that that he had worked as an advisor and a diplomat in the US State Department. He even posted a picture of an award that the then-US ambassador to Iraq, James Jeffrey, had given him for his efforts, although with some lines blacked out.
Shamsuddin claimed that he had obscured those lines “for security reasons.” Yet Saeed’s challenge to his credentials raises doubts about that as well.
As Saeed tweeted, Shamsuddin “only worked as an interpreter in the US embassy in Iraq,” pointing out that “falsely representing himself as a US official is considered a felony in the United States.”
“This is NOT true. You claimed to have Master’s throughout your campaign in 2018. Video, ads,& etc all available. Furthermore, you misrepresented your credentials about @StateDept. You were never an advisor, but a translator @USEmbBaghdad Misrepresentation of US Gov is a felony,” Saeed said in his tweet.
Editing by Laurie Mylroie