By Nawzad Mahmud SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region – A member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP)’s leadership council in Kirkuk has denied claims the KDP will encourage its supporters to vote for other parties in the city. “The final decision we have made is to boycott the election. Therefore, we will not vote,” party official Mohammed Kamal said. The KDP’s boycott of the election has further complicated the atmosphere in the province of Kirkuk, taken from the Peshmerga by Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) in October last year. On the one hand, those Kurdish parties that are participating in the election hope to make gains at the KDP’s expense. On the other, they fear the boycott could dissuade their own voters from turning out to the polls. However, these parties have not yet lost hope that the KDP might change its mind and encourage its supporters to take part in the election. “The final decision made by the KDP politburo is that the party will boycott the election in Kirkuk. However, our voters are free to vote, due to family relations, for a relative running on another list,” Kamal added. “The KDP boycotted the political process in Kirkuk province before the election because the process was illegal, abnormal and not right. How can you campaign and ask people to vote for you under these conditions?” Claims recently surfaced on social media suggesting the KDP has indirectly informed its supporters in Kirkuk province to vote for candidates running on the list of the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU) or the Kurdistan Socialist Democratic Party. KDP officials have ruled out these claims. Mohammed Khurshid, head of KDP branch 3 in Kirkuk, said: “We don’t consider other candidates more competent than the KDP ones to vote for them, and we have no candidates there.” “Other parties regularly contact our branch, calling on us to help them and give them our voter support. These claims are made in this regard. But the message we have conveyed is that we don’t vote,” he added. In the Iraqi parliamentary election held in 2014, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) won 209,000 votes in Kirkuk, handing them six seats in the province. The KDP won 63,000 votes, giving them two. “I am sure the Kurds cannot, under current circumstances, win the votes they won in the last election even if we participate in the election,” Kamal said. He also said the KDP would not encourage people to boycott the election. Although the Kurdish parties in Kirkuk share a common frustration at the situation in the province, this has not led to any joint stance. Although the majority of the population in Kirkuk is Kurdish, they cannot speak about independence or raise national slogans in their election campaigns. “The people of Kirkuk are angry, and many of them say they won’t vote. However, they are gradually coming to the understanding that the Arab and Turkmen votes and seats will further increase if they don’t vote. This might make them change their opinion and finally go to ballot boxes,” Jwan Hasan, head of the KIU list in Kirkuk, said. “The people of Kirkuk will eventually find it necessary to turn a blind eye on the mistakes made by the parties and finally vote in the election so that Kurdish votes don’t decrease,” she added. “If they [KDP supporters] vote for us, we will welcome that and promise to respect their confidence in us and represent them too in the parliament,” she added. Hemin Hawrami, a KDP leadership member, thinks his party’s boycott of the election is a legitimate political stance that serves the wider interests of Kurds. He told Rudaw: “We will not take part in an election void of national slogans. That is, we will not participate in an election that gives legitimacy to the treason committed on October 16. However, we want to reassure the people of Kurdistan that the KDP will use its support in Kirkuk to the benefit of the Kurdish position in Kurdistan and Iraq. The votes of KDP supporters in Kirkuk will not be wasted. We have our own technique to ensure this. The KDP has made a political decision on this matter.”
