Iraqi Parliament Faces Contentious Deliberations over Education in the Triennial Budget

Shafaq News/ The corridors of the Iraqi parliament continue to witness a fervent contest of negotiations with the country's triennial budget being at the locus of these disputes.

A significant contingent of Iraqi lawmakers, one-third to be precise, formally requested on Saturday that the parliament's presidium and its financial committee consider the deletion of a provision that was included in the triennial budget, deeming it to be outside of its jurisdiction.

The petitioners, totaling 103 deputies and led by the head of the Higher Education Committee, Mazahem al-Khayyat, challenged the recently added Paragraph Three of Article 1. This contested clause advocates the establishment of postgraduate branches in private colleges and the private education sector.

Despite meeting for the first time on Thursday, the Iraqi parliament has managed to vote on only approximately half of the federal budget provisions. However, the voting on the provisions related to the entitlements of the Kurdistan region remain to be approved as no consensus has been reached.