Kurdistan Region Presidency, UNAMI, IHEC meet to set parliamentary election date

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Delegations from the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and Iraq’s federal electoral body on Tuesday met with the Kurdistan Region Presidency in Erbil to discuss setting a date for the Region’s long-awaited parliamentary elections.

Kurdistan Region Presidency Spokesperson Dilshad Shahab told Rudaw’s Bakhtiyar Qadir prior to the meeting, that a delegation from UNAMI and Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Committee (IHEC) are scheduled to meet on Tuesday with the Kurdistan Region Presidency to discuss “setting a mechanism for the Kurdistan Region’s parliamentary elections.”

The head of the IHEC, members of the electoral body’s board of commissioners, and a representative from UNAMI, as well as representatives from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) attended the meeting.

Rudaw has learned from sources who attended the meeting that the IHEC delegation suggested holding the elections in June, given that the vote requires at least four months of preparation.

“The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the preparation steps for the Kurdistan Region’s parliamentary elections,” read a statement from the Kurdistan Region Presidency following the meeting.

The Presidency and the KRG also expressed their full readiness to facilitate and assist the process in a transparent and professional manner.

The Kurdistan Region's parliamentary elections were initially scheduled for October 2022 but were pushed to November of the following year due to disagreements among political parties over the election law.

After an Iraqi court ruling against the self-extension of the Kurdistan parliament as a result of the delayed elections, the poll was postponed to February 2024, this time under the supervision of the Iraqi electoral commission which announced that the Region's leaders should appoint a new date as the vote cannot be held on the scheduled one.

IHEC recently announced that the vote must be postponed further as the federal court has yet to make a ruling on the Region’s election law.

Two politicians from the Kurdistan Patriotic Union (PUK) and a Christian party in Sulaimani have filed two lawsuits against the Kurdistan Region’s election law, which was passed in 1992 and last amended in 2013, separately, to the Iraqi federal court. The court is treating both as one case due to their similar nature.

The lawsuits claim that several articles of the Kurdish election law are unconstitutional. These include Article 36 which stipulates that 11 of the legislature’s 111 seats are dedicated to minorities under a quota system. Turkmens have five seats, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Syriacs have five, and Armenians have one.

The commission has previously warned that any delay in the court ruling will affect the timeline of the Kurdish polls.

An official announcement of the new election date will be made following the awaited federal court ruling, according to the Rudaw sources who attended the meeting.

The federal court is set to make a ruling on the Region's election law on Wednesday.

The 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 IHEC to supervise the Kurdistan Region’s poll, clearing another hurdle for the controversial vote to take place.

In preparation for the polls, IHEC postponed the deadline for voters to register or update their registrations for the parliamentary elections, according to IHEC spokesperson Jumana Ghalai who told Rudaw earlier on Monday. The deadline, which expired on Monday, was extended to the end of this month.

 

Updated at 2:29 pm with the statement from the Kurdistan Region Presidency