Tayyib Jabar, an engineer and a poet has been nominated by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) as their joint candidate for the position of Kirkuk governor.
The decision was announced in a joint news conference on Thursday, July 11 in Sulaimaniyah.
Speaking to reporters, KDP spokesman Mahmoud Muhammad said, “We received a large number of CVs for the post of Kirkuk governor; we had set a number of conditions for our candidate. Finally Tayyib Jabar was endorsed as the Brotherhood List’s candidate.”
“We are in favor of coexistence among the diverse components of Kirkuk and we support any efforts towards stability and peaceful coexistence”, he said adding that their endeavors will continue to resume provincial council meetings.
Meanwhile, PUK spokesman Qadr Hamajan Aziz stressed that the next governor of Kirkuk will serve all the diverse communities of the multi-ethnic province indiscriminately.
“We will hold talks with the other ethnic groups concerning the future of Kirkuk”, he added.
Tayyib Jabar needs to obtain over 50%+1 of the votes of Kirkuk provincial council members
Tayyib Jabar was born in 1954 in Tapaloo, a village in southeastern Kirkuk. He currently resides in Sulaimaniya. Jabbar had held the post of general director at the KRG’s ministry of housing and reconstruction.
To become governor, Tayyib Jabar needs to obtain over 50%+1 of the votes of Kirkuk provincial council members.
The council meetings were brought to a halt following the October 16, 2017 events, when Iraqi federal forces returned to Kirkuk and other territories disputed by Baghdad and Erbil as a repercussion of a referendum on independence in the Kurdistan Region.
KDP members of the council have since boycotted the council meetings, demanding the normalization of the situation in the province which it described as “occupied”.
The Kurdish Brotherhood list holds 26 seats in the 41-seat council, enabling them to elect new governor even if the Arab and Turkmen blocs boycott the session.
Rakan Saeed al-Jiburi, a Sunni Arab has been appointed as acting governor of Kirkuk since October 2017, after the Iraqi parliament sacked former Kurdish governor Najmaddin Karim.
