ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – As Iraq’s five million Kurds go to the polls on Saturday to elect the next legislature for their self-rule Kurdistan Region, they must ask themselves if these elections are truly transparent and democratic.
This is because there have been documented irregularities from the 2009 elections that were not investigated.
They have included instances of voter fraud, out-of-date voter registries, people voting more than once.
These allegations should concern Kurdish voters, regardless of whether he or she supports the dominant Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) or backs the main opposition Change Movement (Gorran) or one of the smaller opposition parties.
A report by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) cited “anecdotal cases of serious voting irregularities. Independent monitors like Jabar Amin, from the Swedish Green Party, reported many people voting more than once. He said the ink used to fingerprint voters, to avoid double-voting, had been easily washable.
There were also allegations of observers being shut out of polling stations for “at least half the day,” in Duhok and Sulaimani, according to a report from the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR).
There were 415 claims filed about voting issues with the Independent High Electoral Commission But they were dismissed on grounds they were improperly filed.
In 2009, opposition groups in asked the Kurdistan Region’s courts to investigate allegations of voter fraud and reports that party observers had been barred from polling stations. But one year later a judicial panel declared the allegations mute due to lack of evidence.
In the upcoming elections, political parties have expressed concerns over out-of-date registry lists governed by the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC).
Even though IHEC says it updated the registry in December 2012, it admits that there are many names of deceased citizens that have not been removed, and continue to show up as voters.
Recently, the PUK sided with the opposition parties in claims that only 440 names of the 90,000 people who have died since March 2009 have been removed from the voter registry.
One PUK official claimed that 10,000 deceased individuals had voted in the 2009 regional elections.
These accusations should be a concern for Kurdish citizens about the fairness of the elections.
Proper regulations are crucial to ensure people's votes get to their candidates of choice.
