ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraqi lawmakers on Tuesday are set to vote on extending the electoral commission’s term by an additional six months to accommodate for holding the provincial council elections in December and the Kurdistan Region’s parliamentary elections in February. “Amending the Iraqi electoral commission’s law is to extend the commissioners’ terms for six months so that they have the authority to supervise and administrate the Kurdistan Region’s parliamentary and the Iraqi provincial council elections,” Emad Jamil, the media head of the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC), told Rudaw’s Hastyar Qadir. The IHEC comprises of nine commissioners and their term of office is four years. The current commission’s term is set to expire on December 7. Iraq will hold provincial council elections on December 18, the first of their kind since 2013. The councils, created by the 2005 Iraqi constitution following the fall of Hussein, are powerful bodies that hold significant power in the country, including setting the budgets for several sectors such as education, health, and transport. The Kurdistan Region provinces will not partake in the provincial council elections, but are set to hold parliamentary elections on February 25, 2024. The polls were initially scheduled to be held in October 2022, before being pushed to November of the same year due to disagreements between the political parties. The Iraqi top court’s ruling against the self-extension of the Kurdistan parliament meant the polls would once again be postponed to February 2024, this time under the supervision of the IHEC.
