Iraqi prime minister tries to defuse Sunni-Kurdish parliamentary opposition to proposed budget

Prime Minister Haider Abadi. (REUTERS)

BAGHDAD: The Iraqi Parliament failed to pass the 2018 annual budget for the third month in a row on Wednesday.
This was despite the presence of Prime Minister Haider Abadi and senior officials of the Ministry of Finance to answer questions from the opposing parliamentary blocs, Iraqi lawmakers told Arab News.
Abadi’s Cabinet had sent the draft of the budget to Parliament to be approved late in October, but Sunni and Kurdish blocs, in addition to several small Shiite blocs, were keen to break the quorum and boycott all sessions to discuss the budget.
Failure to approve the annual budget limits the central government’s ability to disburse funds and cripples local governments.
Most of the Sunni and Kurdish blocs are aiming to take advantage of this to delay the parliamentary elections, scheduled to take place on May 12.
Saleem Al-Jobori, the speaker of the Parliament, on Tuesday added the discussion of the draft budget to the Parliament daily schedule work despite the boycott of the Kurds and Sunnis, and asked Abadi to attend the session to discuss the objections of opposing blocs.
Sunnis have been demanding an increase in allocations to reconstruct the liberated areas and bring displaced people back to their homes, while some Shiites are demanding the delivery of petrodollars to oil-producing provinces. The Kurds are dissatisfied with the reduction of the budget share for Kurdistan, from 17 percent to 12.67 percent.
Abadi, who attended Parliament as prime minister and acting minister of finance, said that some of the demands could be dealt with, but the funding share for the Kurdistan region was not negotiable as it was based on the records of the Federal Ministries of Planning and Trade.
“The government has put all revenues in the budget and if the Parliament wants to reallocate some items, it can be discussed,” Abadi said in a statement from his media office after his meeting with lawmakers on Wednesday.
“The government has adopted the principle of justice and demographic proportions in determining the share of the Kurdistan region,” the statement said
Based on a political agreement made between the Shiite and Kurdish political parties, the Kurdish region has received 17 percent of the total annual budget since 2003.
Kurdish politicians and officials lost control over the oil hub city of Kirkuk, its lucrative oil fields and most of the revenues of airports and exported oil in response after a controversial referendum on independence held by KRG late in September.
If the Parliament approved the budget with the 12.67 percent proposed by the federal government, Kurdish officials and politicians will lose their last chance to remove funds from the supervision of Baghdad, lawmakers and officials involved in current discussions over the budget told Arab News.
“We boycotted the (Wednesday’s) session. We believe that our problems with the (federal) Cabinet will not be solved in a public session like this where no lawmaker can talk for more than a minute or two,” Ameen Baker, a Kurdish federal lawmaker and a member of the Parliamentary Finance Committee, told Arab News.
“Abadi’s showing up in the Parliament does not change anything relating to our stand. We are rejecting the reduction of the (Kurdish) region’s share. This is illegal and not justified.
“The reduction of our share is unjust and politically motivated,” Baker said.
Wednesday’s parliamentary meetings between Abadi and lawmakers resulted in an initial agreement to approve the budget as soon as possible after some deals were reached on the allocations of both the Sunni provinces affected by three years of war against Daesh and the oil-producing provinces including Basra and Amarra in the south.
An initial agreement was made by Abadi as the acting minister of finance and the opposing Sunni blocs to reallocate another two trillion dinars (around $16 billion) to the budget of the Sunni areas impacted by the war against Daesh, lawmakers told Arab News.
“We have agreed that the budget has to be approved soon to reduce the negative impacts of the delay. We as Sunni blocs were asking to increase the allocations of the liberated areas and the displaced people and we have received many positive signs from the prime minister that he does not mind reallocating some money for these areas,” Yaheya Al-Ethawi, a Sunni lawmaker, told Arab News.
“Abadi will come again tomorrow to the parliament and more discussions will be made to defuse the problem. The Kurds are still insisting on their positions and we believe that all sides can resort to the constitution and the records of the Ministries of Trade and Planning,” Al-Ethawi said.