ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — A million Iraqis living abroad will not be able to cast a ballot in Iraq’s parliamentary elections later this year. The Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) said it is not able to register overseas voters ahead of the October election.
“The Commission has faced several technical, financial, legal and health obstacles, the most important of which is that completing the process of registering Iraqi voters abroad biometrically in all its stages needs approximately 160 days in ideal conditions, while the time remaining is only 40 days,” read a statement from the IHEC on Tuesday. The decision was made during a commission meeting on Monday.
The IHEC has 40 days left to finalize the voter list, spokesperson for the IHEC Jumana Alghalai told Rudaw’s Mushtaq Ramadhan on Tuesday.
“There are roughly a million eligible Iraqi voters abroad,” she said, but just a fraction of them voted in previous elections. In 2014 and 2018, the number of voters who cast ballots overseas “slightly exceeded 100,000 people,” she said.
Last year, Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi announced early elections for June 6, one of the demands from demonstrators in protests across central and southern Iraq that began in October 2019. Kadhimi asked the IHEC in November to take “all necessary measures” to ensure the elections will be held as scheduled, and should “continuously work to guarantee a successful election.”
But preparations have hit multiple delays.
In January, Iraq’s council of ministers decided to move the date to October 10. This postponement "is not a deviation from the principle of an early election, for it will happen in any case, and we have not compromised on early elections for it is a popular demand supported by the Marja and it is part of the government's program," Kadhimi said at the time, referring to Iraq's highest Shiite authority.
In February, the IHEC extended the registration period for candidates and coalitions because numbers were low. According to a United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) report on Iraq’s electoral preparations, “as of 25 February, only 86 candidates had submitted their nomination papers to IHEC.”
“To date, the registrations of 5 coalitions have been approved while 8 applications are still in process; a total of 249 political parties are now accredited while 58 applications are still in process,” added the UNAMI report, released in March. “Of these, 99 political parties have indicated their intention to participate in the upcoming election.”
