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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) on Tuesday revealed the “strategy” it used in Iraqi parliamentary elections to make gains in Sunday’s Iraqi parliamentary elections. However, rivals believe the low turnout was the most important factor in the KDP’s success.
The KDP, which is the dominant party in the Kurdistan Region, won 25 seats in the 2018 elections in Iraq, but secured at least 32 seats on Sunday’s polling, according to official preliminary results. Party officials have claimed there is a possibility they may win a couple of seats more once all votes are counted.
This victory was unexpected to many as the Region has been suffering from a financial crisis and the KDP-dominated Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has failed to pay its civil servants in full and on time for years. The number of votes the party received have also significantly decreased compared to the previous elections. But how did the KDP gain at least seven more seats on Sunday?
Hoshyar Zebari, who led the party’s election campaign, revealed to reporters on Tuesday the “strategy” that his team, which included several top party officials, had drafted in light of the new electoral law.
The KDP chose to make telephone calls and house visits to constituents based on an internal zoning system, asking registered voters from each zone to vote for a specific candidate. For example, the KDP official Twitter account published maps guiding the KDP registered voters of 16 neighborhoods in Erbil to vote for female candidate Nahla Qadir. This map was sometimes updated in other parts of the province due to changes in calculations.
Other parties who appear to have done well are the Sadrists, who have been in negotiations with the KDP even prior to the elections about the future of governance in Iraq.
According to the new electoral system, if a candidate gained more votes than needed to win a seat, the rest of the votes will not be given to another candidate from the same party but be wasted - unlike the previous system.
“We have been working very secretly as a team recently,” Zebari said. “Based on an order from the President [Masoud Barzani] we spoke less and worked more.”
KDP leader Masoud Barzani had asked all party officials not to respond to false claims or be involved in any war of words - but focus on the election campaign. Zebari claimed that this “strategy” proved to be practical as the party’s rivals gained less seats, referencing the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which heavily targeted the KDP during the campaign but made losses this election.
The first sign of this new strategy emerged when the KDP deputy leader Nechirvan Barzani told KDP supporters in several locations including in Duhok on October 3 that they should follow the clear-cut instructions from the party and vote for the candidates specified for them.
“It is important to know how to vote. The new electoral rule has not been implemented before. It definitely has pros and cons. The most important thing about this new system is that voters should abide by the program set up by the party. It does not matter which candidate or tribe gains the most votes. We only have one objective in this election: victory for the KDP,” he said.
“Everyone should listen to the instructions issued for them by the KDP and its leadership. There should not be issues in this regard. When a candidate gains more votes than another one, this will cause us trouble,” added Barzani.
The plans seem to have worked well because most of its candidates won seats in the Kurdistan Region. In Erbil’s District 1, which covered KDP strongholds like Soran and Barzan, the party’s candidates gained similar results: Sipan Aziz (25,233), Nahro Mahmoud (29,649) and Mohammed Sadiq (24,128).
Despite female KDP candidate Jwan Abdullah only gaining 9,174 while PUK candidate Faysal Karimkhan, from the powerful Bradosti tribe, gaining 18,443 votes in the same district, Abdullah won the seat due to the quota system for women.
Shaswar Abdulwahid, leader of the New Generation, told reporters on Tuesday that the KDP is not a winner of the election because its overall votes decreased and attributed the party’s wins to the low turnout in the elections, which was 41 percent.
“The results gained by the KDP and PUK were the worst in the last 30 years. The population of the Kurdistan [Region] was nearly three million people 30 years ago and the KDP gained 600,000 votes [in the first election]. After 30 years, the population of Kurdistan has doubled, meaning the KDP’s votes ought to be 1.2 million but it is actually 400,000,” Abdulwahid said.
Zebari disagreed and told reporters on Tuesday that it was not the KDP vote that lost popularity, but was the low turnout that affected the vote numbers.
The KDP plan for the elections “was generally good but it was not satisfactory. We had issues in some areas and we lacked necessary coordination in some other places. If everyone abided to the plan and strategy, believe me we would gain much more [seats]," added Zebari.
Pundits also believe that the low turnout was one of the main factors behind the remarkable victory of the KDP in this election.
The KDP’s plan for its main stronghold, Duhok, did not work properly as it lost two seats there. The failure has been attributed by some to the weakness of losing candidates and Kurdistan Islamic Union’s (KIU) strong showing in the province.
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