ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq’s High Judicial Council has formed a judicial board that will review the results of the Kurdistan Region’s upcoming parliamentary elections.
According to a document seen by Rudaw, the Iraqi High Judicial Council has formed a jury of three primary members and two reserves to review potential complaints about the June 10 parliamentary poll. One primary member and one reserve are Kurds.
The formation of the judicial board was in response to a request from the Kurdistan Region’s High Judicial Council made on March 13. The Iraqi Constitution orders the establishment of such judicial boards for each election.
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.
In an unprecedented and surprising move, Kurdistan Region’s largest and oldest political entity, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), on Monday announced it would not take part in the long-overdue and contentious election.
The United Nations has warned against further postponement of the vote and pundits say this could exacerbate a political impasse in the Kurdish enclave and add fuel to intra-Kurdish and Erbil-Baghdad tensions.
KDP pulled out of the election in protest over Federal Supreme Court rulings to eliminate minority seats in the Kurdish legislature and impose a four-constituency system on the June vote.
The party’s politburo said that the court ruling was 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.”
