Roj Bash Kurdistan

ERBIL, Iraqi Kurdistan -- Kurdistan Region President Massoud Barzani is expected to nominate Kosrat Rasoul Ali to serve as vice-president again.

Barzani is expected to send the nomination for parliamentary approval in the near future.

In addition to having served as Barzani’s vice-president in the past, Ali a deputy to Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) leader Jalal Talabani. The PUK has a strategic power-sharing agreement with Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).

Ali’s nomination comes following months of speculation and occasional tension between the KDP and PUK over who should fill the vice-presidential post which has been vacant since 2009.

Fazil Mirani, a senior KDP official, told Rudaw, “If the PUK nominates Ali today, we will approve him tomorrow.”

While the Kurdistan Region Government (KRG) is a parliamentary system, many have said with its current power structure it is difficult to determine if the political system in Kurdistan is presidential or parliamentary.

Talib Rashid, head of legal affairs of the Kurdistan Region’s presidential office, said it is a parliamentary system “but has also a semi-presidential character too. The powers given to the president have not turned the system into a presidential one.”

Barzani wields enormous power as president and often represents the region internationally. Barzani was elected as Kurdistan Region President in 2009 with nearly 70 percent of the vote in the region. He also served as president from 2005 to 2009.

The vice-president is deputy commander-in-chief but does not hold many of the powers of the president including deploying troops.

The president’s office has often been criticized for limiting its staff to KDP and PUK officials and sidelining the opposition. However, Fuad Hussein, chief of staff for the president, said, “There are people from all religions, sects and affiliations in the Kurdistan Region’s president’s office.”

Abubakr Ali, a senior official in the opposition Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU), said, “The opposition doesn’t talk to the president’s office with the same language it uses for the government. It even sometimes makes a distinction between the president and the KDP when it is at odds with the KDP.”

Hussein said the president has “Relationships with all opposition leaders and has dialogue and meetings with them.”

Yusef Mohammed, an official from Kurdistan’s largest opposition party, Change, said the president has been seen as taking the side of the two ruling parties, the KDP and PUK.

He criticized the president for not taking a “neutral role” during the protests that engulfed some cities across the Kurdistan Region last year.

However, he admitted that the president has taken on a more intermediary role in the recent tensions between political parties, saying “This has to be enshrined in the constitution of the Kurdistan Region that he should not favor any political group.”

Mohammed said the president should not consider himself part of the government “Otherwise it will become part of the problem.”