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Ashti Hawrami, Thank you for “saving Kurdistan national
resources” |
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The opinions
expressed in this commentary are solely those of the
author |
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Ashti Hawrami, Thank you for “saving
Kurdistan national resources”
31.8.2012
By
Raber Derayee —
Ekurd.net
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Kurdistan Minister of Natural Resources, Thank you
for “saving national resources”
August 31, 2012
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)'s Minister
of Natural Resources Ashti Hawrami made a rare
interview with an Erbil-based newspaper, Rudaw, that
was published on Aug. 29 in which he accused
Nawshirwan Mustafa, the current leader of the main
opposition party, Gorran, of signing oil contracts
in 2006 – while he was a member of the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party – that would give
large shares of revenues to an exploration company
in Sulaimaniyah that would monopolize the
exploration in the province. He said as of his
appointment as Minister of Natural Resources he had
revoked that contract and had signed five deals
instead of one for exploration of the same area of
land in Sulaimaniyah which together would bring
Kurdistan 100 times more revenue and would encourage
competition among the companies. He complained that
instead of being thanked for saving so much money,
he was attacked by Mr Mustafa's Gorran for
corruption.
I am not surprised that Mr Hawrami wants to be
thanked for what he is being paid for to do. It is
just a syndrome in this country that affects
officials' memories once they are in power they
forget that they are there to serve people not to do
them favors for which people normally show
gratitude. However, on behalf of all my fellow
citizens, I would like to thank Mr Hawrami for doing
us the favor of saving so much money, but I would
also like to make the following points regarding his
remarks:
• Gorran Party has rejected such claims that Mustafa
has signed any contracts. They said Mustafa never
had a government position in order to sign a
contract, and the Minister said at the very
beginning of the interview that the contract was
signed "at the request of Mustafa" and then later on
he says it "was signed by Mustafa", I wonder which
is it?
• While Hawrami talks about a mysterious 5 percent
share going to two people (whom I am sure are not
from Mr Mustafa's party or Mr Hawrami would not have
hesitated to revel their identities) secretly, the
oil revenue since Hawrami took office despite all
the improvement and money savings he talks about is
not transparent and nobody actually knows where the
money go to.
• The claim that the previous contract would earn
Kurdistan only $40 million instead of $5 billion
under the current contracts sounds to me like pure
propaganda because the two figures are just no close
in any way so that someone can steal some extra
money from the oil revenues and get away with it
without anyone noticing it. Besides, no one would be
so fool as to sign a contract that is worth $500
million for only a $5 million bonus for the region
knowing for sure that all secrets sooner or later
would be disclosed.
• The Minister is so desperately in need of some
pats on the shoulder as he repeats the question:
"Why he did not thanks us.." for this and that. If
the minister really thinks that Mustafa was involved
in money laundering and corruption, then it would be
so naive to expect from him to offer any gratitude
for someone who discloses his scandals. Wouldn't it?
• Mr Hawrami also refers to other contracts signed
between Mustafa and other companies in which 20
percent would go to unknown people. So much for such
accusations! If there is any evidence please provide
it so we can believe it and so corrupt officials can
be scandalized and hopefully b tried!
• Mr Hawrami claims that KRG's oil contracts were
approved by the parliament and 111 MPs "voted in
favor of it" and among them "SOME" Gorran MPs. Well,
I don't know what else to say about this statement
except it is a contradiction! If there were SOME
Gorran MPs who voted in favor NOT all (there are 25
Gorran MPs in parliament apart from other opposition
MPs), then the Minister is contradicting his
previous statement where he said 111 MPs voted in
favor of the contracts because the Kurdish
parliament is formed of 111 seats!
• Now look at this quote: "During my visit with Mr.
Mustafa… I also asked him if he was suspicious about
the transparency of oil revenues in Kurdistan and
his answer was that I appeared honest and clean in
performing my duty. I asked him why he didn't say
the same thing on TV so people know the truth, but
he said "why would I praise a government that I wish
to overthrow?" how credible! Are we really supposed
to buy that? It is nice to praise oneself by putting
words into others' mouths, huh?
• And this part is puzzling to me when the minister
says $4.22 billion out of $5 billion in oil revenues
will be used by the companies on projects? What
projects? And are they public service projects? It
seems that the KRG has only received about $730
million out of the $5 billion revenue the Minister
so proudly boast of and of which only $350 million
as the minister says is obvious that was spent on
water projects while the rest he has no idea about.
However, it is not the rest of the $730 million that
is a riddle to me, w.ekubut the rest of the $5
billion. What exactly does it mean that about $4.22
billion of the revenues will be used by the
companies on projects? I am assuming they mean more
oil exploration projects and in which case all the
$5 billion revenue Mr Hawrami claimed that would go
to the KRG is not actually correct and that the
companies still keep about 80 percent of the
revenues by using it on the projects.
Note: I read this interview with Ashti Hawrami on
EKURD.NET which had reposted it from Rudaw
Newspaper's website. I tried to find the original
page on Rudaw but it seems that it has been removed
or there was something wrong with the website that
did not show the page. When you search the headline
you can still find the link to the page on Rudaw
newspaper's website, but when you click on it you
will get an error message saying the page is not
found. The article however was re-posted by a many
websites before the original article disappeared on
Rudaw's website.
For the full interview on EKURD.NET click the link
below:
http://www.ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2012/8/state6450.htm
Raber Younis Aziz, a Kurdish
journalist and blogger from Erbil, the capital of
the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region. He has worked
for AKnews as English News Editor and Managing
Editor.
A contributing writer
and columnist
for Ekurd.net. He can be reached at raber.younis@gmail.com,
or you can follow his blog http://kurdishobserver.blogspot.com
Copyright
© 2012 Ekurd.net
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