An official letter from the office of the Parliament Speaker Salim al-Jabouri says the three Kurdish lawmakers, Massoud Haider, Sirwan Abdulla and Shakhawan Abdulla, would be suspended for 15 days from their parliamentary status, NRT reported.

The letter says the three lawmakers had disrupted a parliament’s session on Monday and had broken the behavior rules of the parliament.

The lawmakers will also be sent to the committee responsible for the rules of parliament behavior to be investigated, the letter states. The lawmakers could be stripped from their status permanently, it adds.

Iraqi parliament held a session on Monday, February 5, to vote on the 2018 federal budget bill.

The Kurdish lawmakers prevented the bill from passing after they stood in front of the presidency’s podium to stop the financial committee of the Iraqi parliament from reading a report on the federal budget bill.

The parliament postponed the session to Sunday.

Iraq’s Council of Ministers had completed and circulated the Iraqi federal 2018 budget bill in October.

In early November 2017, the KRG Council of Ministers challenged the bill on a number of points. Kurds are concerned over the draft bill, saying there is an imbalance in the distribution of the budget over all of the Iraqi provinces.

Of specific concern is the Kurdistan Region’s share in the proposal which has been cut by Baghdad, from 17 percent to 12.67 percent.

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