Iraq’s Kurdistan Democratic Party to boycott regional elections

KDP says it will not comply with ruling issued by Iraq’s top court to end political deadlock over polls

The Kurdistan Democratic Party, one of the two main parties in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, said on Monday that it will not take part in upcoming elections to the local parliament in protest at recent rulings by Iraq’s top court to end a political deadlock that delayed the vote.

A decree issued by the Kurdistan Region’s President Nechirvan Barzani set June 10 as the date for the long-overdue parliamentary election.

The election was supposed to be held in October 2022 but was delayed by disagreements, mainly between the KDP and its rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

The KDP and PUK then agreed to extend the parliament’s term for a year so they could continue negotiations over issues such as amending the elections law and the sharing of tax and oil revenue.

But in May last year the Iraq Federal Supreme Court ruled that all decisions made by the regional parliament after its extension were null and void, including one to reactivate the region’s electoral commission to oversee the elections.

Last month, the court ruled that the Kurdistan region’s parliament should have 100 members instead of 111, and that elections to the body should be overseen by the national electoral commission.

“We see it as in the interests of our people and our homeland not to comply with unconstitutional decisions and a system imposed from outside and against the will of the Kurdistan people and their constitutional institutions,” the KDP’s political bureau said in a statement announcing its intention to boycott the vote.

The KDP “will not partake in an illegal and unconstitutional election under an imposed system”, it said.

The Kurdish region officially gained autonomy after the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, formalising a de facto reality that had held since 1992, when Iraqi government forces withdrew from the region following their defeat in the 1991 Gulf War.

Its autonomy was strengthened and recognised in Iraq’s 2005 constitution.

Since then, the region has been at loggerheads with the federal authorities in Baghdad on a number of issues, including rights to develop and market oil and gas, the region’s share in the federal budget and Kurdish claims to lands outside the region.

The three-province region has also seen political infighting between the KDP and PUK, who have a delicate power-sharing arrangement.