KDP wins big in Kurdistan parliament elections; PUK, New Generation follow

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) emerged victorious in the Kurdistan Region’s parliamentary elections and scored over 800,000 votes across all provinces, preliminary results from Iraq’s electoral body showed Monday. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and New Generation Movement followed.

The KDP won 809,197 votes in the polls, almost double the tally of its rival the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, with 408,141, Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) announced in a presser, with 99.63 percent of all boxes counted.

The New Generation Movement, led by businessman Shaswar Abdulwahid, scored a major upset at the ballot boxes. The Kurdistan Region’s most vocal opposition force won a combined 290,991 votes, rising to become the third largest party in the Region.

The Kurdistan Region held parliamentary elections on Sunday. It was a particularly different vote with the legislature downsized to 100 seats from 111 after a landmark Iraqi court ruling stripped the 11 seats reserved for ethnic and religious minorities. The court later reinstated a quota of five seats within the 100.

The polls had a 72 percent voter turnout, and over two million people across the Region cast their vote, according to IHEC.

The main Islamist parties - Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU) and Kurdistan Justice Group (Komal) - took fourth and fifth place. The National Stance Movement (Halwest), led by the popular and former outspoken lawmaker Ali Hama Saleh, followed in sixth place.

Lahur Talabany’s People’s Front (Baray Gal) performed poorly, with only 33,000 votes across the Region, and the Change Movement (Gorran), once a powerful opposition force, continued its fade into obscurity.

A strong, assertive Baghdad was also in charge of the voting process, as the previous, now-defunct Kurdistan parliament failed to extend the mandate of the regional electoral commission, allowing IHEC to step in.

For the first time, the Kurdistan Region also voted in four different provincial constituencies - Erbil, Sulaimani, Duhok, and Halabja.

The roadmap leading to the polls was mired in political wrangling, particularly between the ruling KDP and PUK – fueled by interference from Baghdad - and political turmoil led to the vote being postponed on four different occasions, with polls originally scheduled for October 2022.

Minority seats

Five seats out of the 100-seat Kurdistan parliament are assigned to minority communities this election cycle. The Assyrian, Chaldean, and Syriac Christian community and the Turkmens were allocated one seat each in Erbil and Sulaimani provinces, and the Christians were also given a seat in Duhok.

Ramy Noori Syawish, the incumbent district mayor of Ankawa, a Christian-majority district on the edge of Erbil city, won the race for the Christian quota seat in Erbil province, beating his competitor from the Iran-backed Babylon Movement.

Former deputy Kurdistan parliament speaker Muna Kahveci won the Turkmen quota seat in Erbil.

Babylon’s candidate Dana Amanj Najeeb took the Christian seat in Sulaimani, where the movement enjoys strong ties with the PUK, and Najdat Mohammed picked up the Turkmen seat.

The Christian seat in Duhok province was won by James Hassado.

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