Iraqis across 15 provinces, excluding Kurdistan Region provinces, headed towards the polling stations on Monday to cast their votes in the country’s first provincial council elections in over a decade.
A total of 6,599,668 ballots were cast across Iraq, accounting for a 41 percent turnout.
“The results of the manual count will be added to the rest of the commission’s results on Sunday… Then we will start the process of revising the legal complaints filed against the results of the elections, which number around 300 but none are of type ‘Red’,” Emad Jamil, head of the Independent High Electoral Commission’s (IHEC) media team told Rudaw.
“They will have no effect on the results of the elections,” he added.
The IHEC official stressed that the final results will not be announced on Sunday nor Monday, but predicted they would be released by the end of the week. The number of seats won by each party in each province will be revealed this week as well, according to Jamil.
The provincial councils were dissolved in 2019 in response to demands by Tishreen protesters who criticized the system for its failures and for enabling corruption.
The provincial councils were created by the 2005 Iraqi constitution following the fall of dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime. They hold significant power, including setting budgets for several key sectors such as education, health, and transport, but are accused of being rife with corruption.
