Parliament names Masrour Barzani as new Prime Minister of Kurdistan
The Kurdistan Parliament on Tuesday resumed its suspended session from Monday and named Masrour Barzani for the post of Prime Minister, who now must receive his mandate from the President.
Barzani was presented by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which won the Sept. 2018 elections and secured 45 seats, as its candidate for the post. The KDP beat out the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) 21, and Gorran (Change) Movement, which won 12 seats out of the total 111-seat of the regional parliament.
Barzani, incumbent Chancellor of the Kurdistan Region Security Council (KRSC), received 87 votes out of 97 attending lawmaker from Tuesday’s Parliament session.
The parliament’s leadership will now present the candidate to the President of the Kurdistan Region, Nechirvan Barzani, who will issue a formal letter asking Masrour Barzani to form the new Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) cabinet within 30 days of being selected, finalizing the appointment process.
Related Article: Nechirvan Barzani takes oath of office as new Kurdistan President
SHORT BIO ON MASROUR BARZANI
Born in 1969 in Erbil’s Balakayati area, Barzani became a Kurdish Peshmerga fighter at the age of 16 in 1985.
He is married and has three sons and a daughter.
Barzani earned a degree in International Studies at the American University in Washington DC, and continued his post-graduate studies in Peace and Conflict Resolutions in the same university.
In 1998, he returned to the Kurdistan Region and was elected by the KDP's 12th Congress to the Central Committee.
In 2010, he was elected to the Leadership Council and then selected as a KDP Politburo member.
In 2012, he was appointed by then-President Masoud Barzani as Chancellor of the Kurdistan Region Security Council (KRSC) to oversee the region’s security, military intelligence, and intelligence services.
Masrour Barzani founded the Barzani Charity Foundation (BCF) in 2005, which has played a key role in providing humanitarian aid to displaced people, refugees, and people in need across the Kurdistan Region, Iraq, and abroad.
He played a crucial role in the fight against the Islamic State since 2014.
Barzani is the founder of the American University of Kurdistan (AUK) in Duhok, which opened in 2014, and acts as the AUK’s Chair of the Board of Trustees.
