“What we want, however, is for all parties, including the Kurdish parties, to work within the system, to do as much as they can to make sure that all groups are included in Iraq,” Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the UN Secretary-General, told Rudaw’s Sinan Tuncdemir.
Haq’s statement came in response to a question regarding the UN’s stance on the decision of the Kurdistan Region’s largest and oldest political entity, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), not to take part in the long-overdue and contentious Kurdistan parliamentary elections.
The KDP in March announced that it will not be partaking in the upcoming elections in light of recent measures taken by the Iraqi Federal Supreme Court deemed by the party to be detrimental to the Kurdistan Region.
The party’s politburo labeled the court ruling as a continuation of its “unconstitutional rulings against the Kurdistan Region in the past four years” and called it an attempt to “return Iraq to a centralized system.”
This development has led many pundits to speculate that the elections may not be held on time as the KDP is the largest Kurdish party and the dominant force in both Erbil and Duhok provinces.
“Ultimately, the goal we want is for an Iraq that is multi-racial, multi-religious, where all communities feel like they can participate,” said Haq. “We hope that a solution can be found so that all ethnic groups in Iraq, including minority groups, can feel included.”
The Kurdistan Region’s general elections were originally slated for October 2022 but have been postponed several times because of disputes between political parties and federal court rulings.
