Elections law in Parl. tomorrow

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: The Iraqi Parliament on Tuesday will debate the representation of minorities in the provincial council elections law that was unanimously voted upon before the Eid al-Fitr (Lesser Bairam) holiday. “Tomorrow, the Parliament will debate the activation of Article 50, which specifies a quota for ethnic minorities in the law on provincial council elections law,” MP Abbas al-Bayati from the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) told IraqiNews.com. On September 24, the Iraqi Parliament unanimously voted on the contentious law on provincial council elections following months of fierce debate. The Parliament’s decision to remove Article 50 has sparked heated reactions from several political blocs representing the country’s Christians as well as other minorities. On July 22, the Iraqi Parliament, with the approval of 127 deputies out of 140 who attended the session, passed the law on provincial council elections, which includes an article postponing the elections in the city of Kirkuk. Lawmakers from the Kurdistan Alliance (KA) had withdrawn from the session in protest against Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani’s decision to have a secret balloting over article 24 of the law, pertaining to the status of Kirkuk. Balloting over all the other paragraphs of the law, however, was open. The Presidential Board, with the unanimity of President Jalal Talabani and his two deputies Adel Abdelmahdi and Tareq al-Hashimi, rejected the law in a rapid reaction one day after the Iraqi Parliament passed it during a session that raised hue and cry over its constitutionality.  The law drew angry reactions from the Kurds, who considered the way the law was passed as a “twisting of the constitution,” threatening to use the right of veto, granted by the Iraqi constitution for the Presidential Board, headed by President Talabani, a Kurd, to reject the law and return it to the Parliament for debate. SS (S) 1