Rakan al-Jabouri, the acting governor of Kirkuk, reveals that he will remain as the governor of Kirkuk until the provincial elections are held, claiming that a preliminary agreement at the federal level has been reached.
In an interview, governor Jabouri spoke to KirkukNow on the inssurgent attacks in south and west of Kirkuk, the service delivery projects, Kirkuk governorship and its administration.
Jabouri recently visited Baghdad and met with the Iraqi President, Barham Salih. “the president supports the governors and the governorates, and the prime minister has reached a preliminary agreement to continue funding the projects so that the projects will not be suspended and the governors will not be replaced.”
He claimed that there had been complaints about political parties’ intervention to change governors in several other provinces.
“We delivered the message that the positions of governors need to be guaranteed to implement their plans. There cannot be changes in the positions every three or six months. The governors cannot do their work this way.”
He said that after the discussions, “ a preliminary agreement is reached to keep the governors as they are until the next elections are held.”
The Iraqi provincial elections were supposed to be held in April; however, the elections were delayed and still lack a new date.
Jabouri commented on recent political parties’ calls for his removal from governorship and said that, “in a democratic system, people are free to say what they want. We only listen to those parties who have political representatives and are influential as well as those who participated in the elections and have members in the parliaments.”
The United Arab Front and the Turkmen Eli parties separately accused Jabouri of negligence and corruption and demanded his dismissal.
Jabouri claimed that those parties do not have representatives, adding that they “have been tested by the people and they are not influential.”
Jabouri asked for the de-escalation of the tensions and said that any party, that has concerns or critics against Kirkuk local administration, can visits him at his home or his office to discuss and solve the problems, adding that he meets with the representatives of political parties despite their political disagreements.
Rakan al-Jabouri was appointed as the acting governor of Kirkuk at the order of the former prime minister, Hadier al-Abadi, after the withdrawal of the Kurdish forces in the city as well as the dismissal of the Kurdish governor, Najmadin Karim.
In the meantime, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) have tried to regain Kirkuk governorship and nominated a candidate based on its agreement with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), however, the agreement was rejected by Turkmen and Arabs of the city.
