KRI Parliament elections: political groups to contest independently, abandon quota seats

Shafaq News/ On Tuesday, several political factions within the minorities have decided to run in the upcoming Kurdish Parliament elections with independent lists, foregoing the competition for the five quota seats, Aydin Maruf Selim, the Minister of State for Minority Affairs in the Kurdistan Region (KRI), announced.

In a press conference held in Erbil, Maruf emphasized the importance of having minority representatives present at the Independent High Electoral Commission and its offices in the Region “to oversee the voting process, especially concerning the quota seats.”

Notably, numerous religious and ethnic minorities live in Iraqi Kurdistan, mainly Turkmen, Assyrians, Yazidi, and Christians.

The Election Judiciary Committee of the Iraqi Supreme Judicial Council has allocated 5 out of 100 seats in the Kurdistan Parliament to the minority components, including the Christian and Turkmen communities. This allocation comprises two seats each in Erbil and Al-Sulaymaniyah Governorates and one in Duhok Governorate.

In early May, the Federal Supreme Court issued a verdict regarding the system for registering candidate lists and approving them for the KRI Parliament elections, numbered 7 for 2024.

The Kurdish President Nechirvan Barzani set October 20, 2024, as the official election date in a Regional decree issued in June.

The number of eligible voters in the Kurdish elections is approximately 3.7 million.