{"id":17211,"date":"2018-10-03T11:24:06","date_gmt":"2018-10-03T11:24:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=17211"},"modified":"2018-10-03T11:24:06","modified_gmt":"2018-10-03T11:24:06","slug":"veteran-kurd-barham-salih-becomes-iraqs-next-president-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=17211","title":{"rendered":"Veteran Kurd Barham Salih  becomes Iraq\u2019s next president"},"content":{"rendered":"<div data-io-article-url=\"http:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/1381431\/middle-east\" readability=\"78\">\n<p>\nBAGHDAD: The veteran secular Kurdish politician Barham Salih was elected on Tuesday as Iraq\u2019s next president.<\/p>\n<p>\nSalih, of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK),\u00a0faced a challenge from\u00a0Fuad Hussein of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). But Hussein withdrew from the second round of voting in parliament on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>\nHis first act in the role was to assign\u00a0Adel Abdul Mahdi, a veteran Shiite politician and former vice president, to form a government.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe selection of the president is the second step in forming a government and is usually the easiest because the two main Kurdish parties decided on a single candidate in advance.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe post of president is allocated to the Kurds under a 2005\u00a0agreement with Shiite and Sunni political forces.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" height=\"704\" src=\"http:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/sites\/default\/files\/2018\/10\/02\/1329326-23910028.jpg\" width=\"1000\"><figcaption>\nAdel Abdul Mahdi, a veteran Shiite politician and former vice president, was assigned to form a government. (AFP)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\nBut the failure of the PUK and the KDP to agree on a candidate turned the process into the latest political crisis to hit Baghdad since May elections.<\/p>\n<p>\nSalih, 60, a senior PUK member, is considered a moderate. He studied at British\u00a0universities and holds a PhD\u00a0in data and statistics. He has occupied many regional and federal positions of government over the last 20 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\nFor the first time since 2003 Tuesday\u2019s parliamentary session witnessed a break from reaching a political consensus to appoint the main positions of government.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\nMPs were allowed by the heads of the main alliances to vote freely for whichever candidate they wanted, deputies told Arab News.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe session was attended by 301 MPs for the first time since 2003 and 19 candidates stood for the post of president.<\/p>\n<p>\nSalih won 219 votes in the decisive second round, while Hussein won 22.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe president is mostly a ceremonial position and does not have executive powers. But many hope Barham will play a key role in improving relations between Baghdad and the Kurdish region and between the Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite blocs in parliament.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BAGHDAD: The veteran secular Kurdish politician Barham Salih was elected on Tuesday as Iraq\u2019s next president. Salih, of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK),\u00a0faced a challenge from\u00a0Fuad Hussein of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). But Hussein withdrew from the second round of voting in parliament on Tuesday. His first act in the role was to&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":17212,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}