ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq’s electoral body on Wednesday said it will prioritize holding the Kurdish parliamentary vote and that “a date may be set that might be so near it will be a surprise,” in response to a request by the Kurdistan Region’s Presidency calling for the vote to be held this year.
The Kurdistan Region Presidency announced last week that it had submitted a formal request to Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) in regards to the Kurdish parliamentary elections, suggesting the polls be held on their originally scheduled date of November 18 or simultaneously with Iraqi provincial elections on December 18.
“We have answered the letter of the Kurdistan Region’s Presidency, we cannot run the Iraqi provincial elections and the Kurdistan Region parliamentary elections on the same day,” Emad Jamil, head of the journalistic team of the commission, told Rudaw.
“It has been decided that we will hold the Kurdistan Region’s parliamentary elections, we are now busy selecting a day for the vote and a date may be set that might be so near it will be a surprise,” Jamil said, adding that the commission will prioritize the Kurdish parliamentary elections over the Iraqi provincial vote.
According to Jamil, the commission has requested some necessities of the elections in response to the presidential letter, such as the Region’s elections law, a mechanism for choosing employees, and a budget for the vote.
Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court in late May ruled against the Kurdistan Region’s parliament decision to extend its term by an additional year, declaring that the term of the legislature had ended and that the self-extension was unconstitutional.
A new parliamentary election was set to be held in October 2022, but disagreements between Kurdish political parties over the current elections law and the electoral commission prevented the process from being conducted on its scheduled time and pushed the legislature to extend its four-year term for an additional year.
With Kurdish lawmakers having failed to reactivate the regional electoral commission before the self-extension and all decisions from the parliament thereafter declared null by the Supreme Court, the IHEC has been tasked with carrying out the poll.
In March, before the federal court ruling, Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani set November 18, 2023 for parliamentary elections, a year after they were due to be held.
