Fouad Massoum: Veteran Politician Likely to be Iraq’s Next President

By RUDAW 16 hours ago

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Fouad Massoum, a founding member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), is seen as the strongest candidate to replace Jalal Talabani as Iraq’s next president.

"Fuad Massoum has the greatest chance for this post," Sarwan Gomashini from the president's legal office told Rudaw after the PUK finalized the candidacy.

Massoum, a self-possessed veteran politician, has been a longtime confidante of Jalal Talabani, Iraq’s current president and PUK head who returned to Kurdistan Saturday after a year-and-a-half in Germany recuperating from a stroke.

Sources also have revealed that the PUK had submitted the name of Adnan Mufti, another party veteran, for the presidency. But Mufti had told Rudaw earlier he was not interested.

Meanwhile the PUK’s Najmaldin Karim, the powerful Kurdish governor of Kirkuk, has reportedly rattled the party by submitting his name for the presidency, but without party consent.

That move raised the ire of other PUK leaders, who rejected any candidate that is not approved by the party leadership.

Under the Iraqi constitution the president is Kurdish, the prime minister a Shiite and the parliament speaker a Sunni. The presidency is traditionally given to the PUK.

Last week MPs in Baghdad finally elected Salim al-Jabouri as parliament speaker, coming a stop closer to forming a government, as Iraq suffers a crisis that threatens to splinter the country.

Even if a president is chosen, the issue of the Shiite prime minister still would remain unresolved: The Sunnis and Kurds have absolutely rejected a third term for Nouri al-Maliki, who has continued to insist he will remain prime minister.

Massoum – whose full name is Muhammad Fouad Massoum Hawrami -- was born in 1938 in the township of Koye in Iraqi Kurdistan. Both his parents originally come from the Hawraman area, and his father was a notable cleric.

He and Talabani come from prominent religious families and spent their childhood in the same town and remain close friends to this day.

As a teenager Massoum studied at Kurdish religious schools, and in 1958 he began studies at Egypt’s prestigious Al-Azhar University, where he earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees in Islamic studies, and later his PhD.

Massoum was a member of the Iraqi Communist Party, which he left early in his career to join the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in 1964.

He taught at the University of Basra and was in charge of the KDP's military operations in Iraqi Kurdistan in the late 60s.

Massoum was a representative of the KDP and Mustafa Barzani in Cairo between 1973-75.

He is one of the founders of the PUK and has remained one of its leading members.

Because of his old ties with the KDP he helped the reconciliation process with the PUK in the 1980s, when the two were at war. In 1992, he became the first prime minister of Kurdistan.

Massoum was a member of the negotiating team in Baghdad that drafted the Iraqi constitution following the 2003 US-led invasion.

In 2004, he became the first speaker of the interim Iraqi parliament, and the year after he became an Iraqi MP.

Massoum is married and has five daughters.

Apart from his other duties, Massoum has supervised the current Iraqi prime minister’s graduate dissertation at Salahaddin University in Erbil.

http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/20072014