ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Mohammad finished work at 4pm in Erbil, jumped into his Toyota Corolla and drove as fast as he could to reach Dukan district in Sulaimani province. He needed to be there before sunset to cast his vote in Iraq’s 2018 parliamentary election. There was a reason why he drove so dangerously. His father, the head of his tribe of around 500 people, decided that they would vote for the Change Movement, known as Gorran in Kurdish. During the past three years, the Change Movement has shifted from being an opposition party to part of the ruling elite with ministers and officials in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) at a time when the general public suffered as a result of the economic downturn due to low oil prices and the COVID-19 pandemic that emptied government coffers in early 2020. The KRG passed some of the burden onto the public sector, introducing austerity measures and slashing salaries for its civil servants. For a party that had galvanized the public since 2009 with an anti-establishment slogan, it was not a surprise that on Sunday, the electorate refused to send even one candidate from the party to the Iraqi parliament. Out of the 500 people from Mohammad’s tribe, no one took part in the election this time around, including Mohammad. The turnout on Sunday was perhaps a historic low, just above 41% according to the initial assessment by the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC), which calculated turnout based on the number of registered voters who cast a ballot. The turnout of eligible voters was just 36%. The turnout in Sulaimani, the heartland of Gorran, was 37% while in the capital Baghdad it was 32%. Turnout has steadily fallen in the past two decades. In Iraq’s first post-Saddam Hussein election in 2005, the turnout was around 80%. By 2018, it was 44%. The refusal of the majority of the Iraqi electorate to take part in the election is a resounding dismissal of the way the ruling elite have managed the country since the US-led coalition removed the previous regime from power in 2003. When the EU chief election observer Viola von Cramon was asked in a school in Baghdad on Sunday afternoon about the low turnout, she said it was a “political message” to the ruling elite and she hoped they would heed that message. This has helped the smaller opposition parties like New Generation to take advantage of the general voter fatigue and entice some disillusioned former Gorran voters. Gorran supporters reacted to the defining defeat of their movement on social media, calling on party leaders to resign. “The Change Movement disappointed 500,000 of its voters,” Mahamad Hamalaw said on Facebook, adding that the reason for losing the votes was because they joined the ruling parties. In this election, Gorran formed a coalition with its former foe the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). “Commercializing on peoples’ votes has a heavy price,” Tahseen Hassan said on Facebook. “Gorran was born in 2009 from within the PUK but died in the PUK arms in 2021,” Sardar Abdulrahman wrote on Facebook. Bigger parties such as the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the PUK, the Sadrist Movement, the Fatah Alliance, and State of the Law have their own portion of the population that vote for them no matter what. “For the ruling parties, votes from their social bases matter, especially in the context of a low turnout where the disillusioned are voiceless. Each seat translates to enhanced bargaining power in the government’s formation,” Chatham House’s Renad Mansour and Hayder Al-Shakeri wrote a few days before voting day. “As with previous elections, this one features little of a policy or ideological debate as parties rely primarily on the political economy to secure votes from their bases, offering public service jobs, distributing goods and services, and announcing infrastructure projects.” In the Kurdistan Region, the KDP and New Generation appear to be the big winners. KDP has increased its seats from 25 in 2018 election to a projected more 33. It appears to have won nine seats in Nineveh province alone. The New Generation won four seats in the 2018 election and is projected to be guaranteed eight seats this time round, possibly nine according to a tally from Rudaw’s election desk. The PUK won 18 seats in 2018, has secured 15 seats this time round and may take another three. The two main Islamic parties have won four seats, according to unofficial results, similar to 2018 with the Kurdistan Islamic Union possibly increasing its seats from three to four.
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