Iraqi parliament sacks finance minister
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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) – The Iraqi parliament on Wednesday sacked Kurdish Finance Minister Hoshyar Zebari.
Ashwaq Jaff, a Kurdish member of the Iraqi government, told Kurdistan24 that 158 members of parliament voted in favor of withdrawing confidence from the Iraqi Finance Minister, 77 against and 14 abstinence.
The parliament session to withdraw the confidence from the Kurdish minister was held in secret which angered some Kurdish MPs especially the MPs of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) who said the action was against the law.
Following the parliament session, the KDP bloc in the Iraqi parliament said in a press conference that they will appeal against the decision of dismissing the finance minister.
“We affirm our commitment in regards to the constitution and law and all procedures of summoning in the parliament, but we see that the process of withdrawing confidence from finance minister is unconstitutional and is illegal,” KDP’s statement said.
According to the KDP MPs the decision is ‘illegal and unconstitutional’ because “signatures of 102 MPs were collected to re-do the session on Zebari’s answers in the parliament and Zebari’s appeal was sent to the High Federal Court but the parliament speaker rejected both requests,” the statement read.
Abbas al-Bayati, an MP from the State of Law bloc told a Kurdish media outlet that “the Iraqi PM Haider al-Abadi has intervened to postpone the no confidence vote, but his efforts failed.”
On Aug. 25, the Iraqi Parliament called upon Finance Minister Hoshiyar Zebari over corruption allegations.
The charges specifically involved the decreasing of salaries of some employees and spending $1 billion IQD on the transportation of his guards between Baghdad and Erbil. Zebari answered questions raised by some MPs regarding the accusations.
On Aug. 25, the Iraqi Parliament voted on the withdrawal of confidence from the Defense Minister Khalid al-Obeidi
Editing by Ava Homa
(Baxtiyar Goran contributed to this report)
