“You have a bright future ahead, if you hold to the democratic process, to the democratic road,” Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf told Rudaw's Diyar Kurda on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York.
The Kurdistan Region is set to hold parliamentary elections on October 20 and official campaigning kicked off on Wednesday. Elections were last held in 2018. They were initially scheduled for 2022, but have been delayed several times.
Nearly 2.9 million people are eligible to vote, including around 215,000 early voters. There will be 1,400 polling stations, including locations in the disputed areas and most Iraqi provinces, for eligible voters.
On Tuesday, Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani called for peaceful election campaigning, urging political parties and candidates to respect women and symbols of ethnic and religious minorities.
The electoral process has faced numerous challenges, with interference from Baghdad exacerbating tensions between the Kurdistan Region’s political parties, particularly between the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).
