Nechirvan Barzani elected president of Kurdish region of Iraq
The Iraqi Kurdish parliament has elected Nechirvan Barzani, the nephew and son-in-law of veteran leader Massud Barzani, as president of the semi-autonomous region.
Barzani, the deputy leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), won 68 votes from the 81 members present in the 111-seat chamber.
The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of late Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, bitter rival of the powerful Barzani clan, had called for a boycott of the vote.
The younger Barzani is the second person to hold the office of president, occupied by his uncle from its creation in 2005 until late 2017, when he quit following an independence referendum hotly opposed by Baghdad.
The new president, who was born in northern Iraq in 1966 but spent part of his life in Iran, speaks fluent Kurdish, Farsi and English, the AFP news agency reported.
In 1996, five years after the region won autonomy in the face of a brutal campaign of repression by the late longtime leader Saddam Hussein, Barzani became vice prime minister, then prime minister in 1999.
The Kurdish region was deeply split, with its Sulaimaniyah province remaining under a rival authority run by Talabani's PUK.
When the two camps decided to reunite the region under a unity government in 2006, Barzani was again chosen to head it.
Barham Saleh, a senior PUK leader who is today president of Iraq, later took up the post, but the younger Barzani was reinstated in 2012.
Middle East Eye delivers independent and unrivalled coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and beyond. To learn more about republishing this content and the associated fees, please fill out this form. More about MEE can be found here.
