New President of Iraqi Parliament: The Iraqi parliament recently elected Kurdish politician Abdul Latif Rashid as the new president.

Key Points:

• Rashid,78 has been elected as the 9th President of Iraq.
• The decision was made after many rocket attacks on Baghdad's Green Zone for several hours.
• Rashid won more than 160 votes against 99 for the incumbent Iraqi Kurd Barham Saleh.
• He is a British-educated engineer and was the Iraqi minister of water resources from 2003-2010.

Who is Abdul Latif Rashid?

• Rashid born in 1944 in the northeastern Sulaymaniyah region of Iraq graduated as a civil engineer from the University of Liverpool in 1968.
• He completed his engineering doctorate in 1976 from the University of Manchester.
• He can speak speaks Kurdish, Arabic and English.
• He has a long history in Iraqi politics.
• He served as the minister of water resources from 2003 to 2010 under the government of Nouri-al-Maliki and then as the senior adviser to the President.
• Before this, he also served in the same position under both the Iraqi Transitional Government and the Iraqi Interim Government.
• He is a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party.
• He was also the former spokesperson for the PUK in Britain.

Note:

• Iraq's president, prime minister, and speaker of the parliament are from different sects in a power-sharing arrangement meant to prevent sectarian conflict.
• According to the Iraqi political norm since 2006, a Kurd is elected as president of the country, while a Shia takes the role of prime minister. A Sunni will head the parliament.

About Iraq:

• It is officially the Republic of Iraq.
• It is a country in Western Asia, bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, Kuwait to the southeast, Saudi Arabia to the south, Jordan to the southwest and Syria to the west.
• The capital city of Iraq is Baghdad.
• The currency used her is Iraqui Dinar.