ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani on Sunday announced that the new date for the Region’s long-overdue parliamentary elections was set for June 10.
“President Nechirvan Barzani has decided that the general elections for the sixth term of the Kurdistan Parliament will take place on June 10th, 2024,” said a statement from the Kurdistan Region presidency.
“All relevant parties are required to collaborate with the Independent High Electoral Commission [IHEC] to ensure the smooth implementation of this decision,” the statement added. The decree becomes effective immediately.
The Kurdistan Region’s parliamentary elections were initially scheduled for October 2022 but were then pushed to November of the following year due to disagreements among political parties over the election law.
After an Iraqi court ruled against the self-extension of the Kurdistan parliament as a result of the delayed elections, the vote was postponed to February 25 of this year, this time under the supervision of the Iraqi electoral commission.
The date of the election was postponed again over a delay in federal court ruling on several articles of the election law. On February 21, the court ruled that the 11 quota seats in the Kurdistan Region’s parliament reserved for ethnic and religious minorities were “unconstitutional,” effectively rejecting the legitimacy of the seats.
The voter registration process for the Kurdistan Region’s delayed parliamentary elections ended on Thursday, with nearly three million having registered for the poll, an official from Iraq’s IHEC said.
Kurdistan Region’s authorities have come under mounting criticism both domestically and internationally, for failing to hold elections on time.
The Iraqi government late last year allocated nearly 70 billion dinars for the IHEC to supervise the Kurdistan Region’ poll, clearing another hurdle for the controversial vote to take place.
Updated at 3:42pm
