ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) on Monday announced that it is “committed” to holding the Kurdistan Region’s parliamentary elections on June 10 despite the Region’s main political party’s decision to boycott the process.
The PUK is “committed to the June 10 date for the Kurdistan parliament elections as set by the Region’s President [Nechirvan Barzani],” Saadi Pira, the party spokesperson, said in a statement.
The announcement came after PUK’s main rival and key ally in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) announced its decision to boycott the Kurdistan general elections, citing their dissatisfaction with changes imposed by Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court on the vote, including the elimination of minority quota seats and the introduction of a multi-constituency system, as the reason for their boycott.
“The PUK believes that holding the Kurdistan Region’s parliamentary elections is the best way to further deepen democracy and move past the current complicated situation domestically and in the region in general,” Pira said in his statement.
“The reactivation of the parliament is significant for the execution of the legislature’s legal and main duties and the resolution of multi-faceted issues of the people of Kurdistan,” he noted.
Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court last month ruled that the 11 quota seats in the Kurdistan Region’s parliament reserved for ethnic and religious minorities were unconstitutional, effectively eliminating the seats.
The KDP politburo said in its Monday statement that the ruling was a continuation of the court’s “unconstitutional rulings against the Kurdistan Region in the past four years,” labelling it “a clear and dangerous violation of the constitution” and an attempt to “return Iraq to a centralized system.”
Imad Jamil, the head of IHEC’s media team, told Rudaw on Monday that the body still plans to hold the Region’s elections on June 10 - a date set by President Barzani earlier this month.
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. The vote was supposed to be held by a Kurdish electoral body.
After the Iraqi federal 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 IHEC.
