The Kurdistan Region’s Presidency announced on Sunday that the Region’s parliamentary elections will be held on November 18, after the legislature postponed the procedure and extended its term by a year in October due to continued disagreements.
“We had not been informed of the date for the Kurdistan Region’s parliament elections, and the day was set while the parties were in the heat of negotiations and discussions,” Rizgar Haji Hama, the head of the PUK’s electoral agency, told Rudaw’s Arkan Ali on Monday, adding his skepticism that the parties would reach an agreement by the designated date.
The Kurdistan Region’s parliamentary elections were supposed to be held in October, but disagreements between the political blocs over the current electoral law and the electoral commission prevented new elections from taking place.
Similar thoughts were echoed by Ziad Jabar, head of the PUK bloc in the Kurdistan Region parliament, saying that the Presidency has the right to set the date for the elections but that their party was expecting this decision to be made following consultations with the blocs.
Minorities’ quota, the reactivation of the electoral commission, and amending the electoral law have been some of the points of disagreement between the political blocs since 2021.
“We still have disagreements, especially when it comes to the minorities’ quota, and we may need to hold talks over the details and technical aspects of other topics so we can amend and prepare the laws in a way that the Kurdistan Region parliament can pass it quickly and hold elections on time,” Jabar told Rudaw’s Sangar Abdulrahman.
Tensions have recently escalated between the Kurdistan Region’s ruling parties –the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the PUK- over the Region’s parliamentary elections, the transparency of the oil and local income of the provinces under their influence, and the assassination of a former PUK colonel in Erbil in October.
