Local elections were held in Iraq’s 15 provinces, excluding the Kurdistan Region, on Monday. Preliminary results with 94 percent of votes counted were announced the following day.
In Kirkuk, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) won 139,373 votes and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) 46,749. Other Kurdish parties garnered a total of around 30,000 votes, according to the official preliminary results.
Rudaw has learned that PUK has a guaranteed five seats and the KDP two in the 16-seat Kirkuk provincial council.
With the remaining six percent of the votes being counted manually in the last two days, the PUK’s votes have increased to 155,048 and KDP’s votes increased to 52,065, Rudaw reporters on the ground have learned.
It is not immediately clear if the changes will affect the number of seats Kurds have won in Kirkuk.
According to the latest figures, Kurds have a total 239,119 votes while Arabs and Turkmens together garnered 305,133 votes. This means Kurds have lost the majority they had for years before losing control of the province in 2017 when federal forces attacked Peshmerga in Kirkuk, ending Kurdish rule.
Final official results have yet to be announced by the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC). A member of the body’s media team said on Thursday that the result could be revealed by Sunday.
“As per the commission’s timetable, the process should be done in 70 hours. Therefore, with a strong possibility, the 100 percent result of the votes could be announced on Sunday or earlier,” Hassan Hadi told Rudaw.
Nibras Abu Soda, another member of the commission’s media unit, told Rudaw on Wednesday that they received 118 complaints from political parties that took part in Monday’s provincial elections.
Hadi said they have rejected 25 of these complaints regarding alleged violations, adding that none of them were categorised as serious.
The overall voter turnout reached 41 percent, higher than the parliamentary elections in 2021 despite a boycott by influential cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
The councils were dissolved in 2019 in response to demands by Tishreen protesters who criticized the system for its failures and for enabling corruption.
Officials from Kurdish political parties have blamed lack of unity for the setback in the disputed areas. Kurds lost over 50,000 votes when they failed to enter the elections as one list.
Kurds failed to preserve their votes and status in Kirkuk, Ali Qalayi, a PUK official told Rudaw on Friday.
“Unfortunately, we could not think in a Kurdish way… Kurds could have built a better future” in Kirkuk, said the KDP’s Taha Taifour.
