“On Wednesday, June 5, the [electoral] commission will open the doors for coalitions and candidates to register to participate in the elections,” Hayman Tahseen, director general of the office of political parties and organizations of Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC), told Rudaw.
Tahseen stressed that the Kurdistan Region’s parliamentary elections must have been carried out “by mid-November.”
IHEC has approved a last month decision by Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council to allocate five seats for minorities in the upcoming elections. According to the latest decision, Erbil and Sulaimani provinces - controlled by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) respectively - will each get one seat for the Christian and one for the Turkmen components, while Duhok - also controlled by the KDP - will obtain a seat for the Armenians.
“We are currently preparing for the Kurdistan parliamentary elections and it has been decided in the election schedule that the door to register coalitions and candidates for the vote will be opened from June 5 and will last for 10 days,” Tahseen said.
Political parties and coalitions who had previously registered do not need to sign up again, according to Tahseen.
“We are now waiting for the Kurdistan Region Presidency to issue a decree to determine the date for the elections,” he said.
Iraq’s federal electoral commission, which is supervising the process, had previously set June 10 as the date for the elections after two years of postponement.
However, the commission recently suggested September 5 as the new date for the polls, days after informing the Kurdistan Region Presidency of its inability to carry out the elections on the previously scheduled date, but Kurdish authorities have yet to finalize the date.
On Sunday, an official from the Kurdistan Region’s ruling KDP said the party will participate in the upcoming Kurdistan Region parliamentary elections if the recent changes to the mechanism of the vote are implemented.
The changes include the Baghdad decision to allocate five seats for minorities across the Kurdistan Region’s three provinces, months after an Iraqi top court stripped the minorities of their quota seats in the legislature.
Following the top court ruling, the KDP decided to boycott the upcoming parliamentary elections, scheduled for June 10 at the time, expressing concern about multiple factors – foremost of which was the minority quota being taken away by Baghdad.
Most Christian and Turkmen parties also joined the KDP in boycotting the elections at the time, demanding the restoration of the quota seats.
Kurdistan Region Prime Minister and KDP senior member Masrour Barzani in early May filed a lawsuit to the Iraqi top court, stating that the elimination of the minority quota was “unconstitutional” and violated principles of fair representation for all of Iraq’s components, as laid out in the constitution.
