ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) spokesperson on Friday announced that the party is challenging the official results of Iraq’s provincial elections, claiming the votes garnered by the party were more than what was announced by the country’s electoral commission, adding the party filed a legal complaint about the election process.
Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) on Thursday announced the results of the country’s provincial elections that were held on December 18.
A statement released by the KDP attributed to spokesperson Mahmoud Mohammed pointed out that the party has criticisms regarding the way the elections were conducted and has filed a legal complaint on the matter.
“We are unsure about the true size of some parties and we are certain that the votes of our party are more than what was announced,” said Mohammed in the statement.
Mohammed said alterations to the number of votes received by parties participating in the elections were due to what he labeled as “political calculations”.
The KDP participated in the provincial elections across the provinces of Kirkuk, Nineveh, Diyala, and Salahaddin, winning six seats in the provincials councils of Nineveh and Kirkuk –two in Kirkuk and four in Nineveh- while failing to secure seats in Salahaddin and Diyala.
Despite its complaints, continued the statement, the KDP “is ready for dialogue and exchanging opinions to form the local governments of the provinces, on the basis of partnership, implementation of political agreements and normalizing the situation in areas previously agreed upon”.
Iraq held its long-anticipated provincial elections in 15 provinces on December 18. The last provincial council elections took place in 2013, without Kirkuk where the last local elections were held in 2005.
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.
The elections marked the return of the Sainte-Laguë voting method, a controversial system that uses the single-constituency per province system instead of the multiple-constituency system that was adopted for the 2021 parliamentary elections as part of the demands of the Tishreen protesters.
The Sainte-Laguë voting method was one of the factors that resulted in over 106,000 votes going to waste in the crucial polls.
