MESOPOTAMIA NEWS : THE OLD NEW WINNER – Barzani’s KDP wins Iraqi Kurdistan parliamentary election
21 Oct 2018 – MESOP – HEWLÊR-Erbil, Iraq’s Kurdistan region,— The ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) came first in a parliamentary election in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq, winning 45 seats, the election commission said on Sunday, positioning it to lead the next regional government.A year after a failed bid for independence, Iraq’s Kurds voted last month in a parliamentary election that could disrupt the delicate balance of power in the region.
Announcement of the results was delayed for three weeks after the Independent High Elections and Referendum Commission said it received and was investigating 1,045 complaints of electoral violations.
The KDP’s historic rival and junior coalition partner in government, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), was in second place with 21 seats, the commission said in a news conference.
The KDP won 668,070 votes, securing first place with 45 seats, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) got 319,912 votes, coming in second place with 21 seats.
The Change Movement (Gorran), which previously held 24 seats in 2013, won 188,913 votes and only 12 seats.The New Generation Movement obtained 127,115 votes, securing eight seats.
The Kurdistan Islamic Group (KIG) won 109,494 votes, securing seven seats, and the Towards Reform, a joint list of the Kurdistan Islamic Union and the Kurdistan Islamic Movement, got 79,334 votes and five seats.
The Sardam List got 15,581 votes and one seat and the Azadi List (Kurdistan Communist Party) won 8,063 votes, securing one seat.The Turkmen lists secured five seats of the Kurdistan parliament with The Turkmen Development Party winning two seats, the National List one, the Turkmen Reform Party one, and the Turkmen Front one.
The Christians also secured five seats. The Coalition of National Union won three seats, the Al Rafidain list one, and the Assyrian Syriac Chaldean Popular Council one.
Armenian independent Fahik Kamal Saranyan won one seat.
Meanwhile, the four IHERC members from Gorran, KIU, and KIG released a statement saying they did not vote to release of final results of the election.The election commission also published figures detailing which candidates secured the most votes.
Qubad Talabani, head of the PUK list, won 182,000. Shaswar Abdulwahid, head of New Generation (Newey Nwe), won 106, 289. Ali Hama Salih, head of the Gorran list, won 81, 934. Hemin Hawrami, head of the KDP list, won 47,000. With opposition parties weak, the KDP and PUK are likely to extend their almost three decades of sharing power, but the results suggest that Masoud Barzani’s KDP will take a dominant position in Kurdish politics.
On Sept. 30, election day, the PUK said it might not recognize the results of the election due to what it described as electoral violations but then appeared to backtrack, injecting uncertainty into the process. Election observers also said there were irregularities.
The two parties, who fought a civil war in the 1990s but more recently have taken to sharing power, have recently come out of a grueling political battle in Baghdad, where they competed for the presidency of federal Iraq. The PUK came out on top with the election of Barham Salih.
The largest Kurdish opposition party, Gorran, or Movement for Change, was a distant third with 12 seats.
There are 111 seats in the Iraqi Kurdistan Parliament with 11 reserved for minority groups.
The KDP leader, Massoud Barzani, who served as president of Kurdistan region from 2005-2017, has been routinely accused by critics of amassing huge wealth for his family instead of serving the population. Barzani’s son is the Kurdistan region’s intelligence chief and his nephew Nechirvan Barzani is the prime minister.
Kurdistan considered as the most corrupted part of Iraq. According to Kurdish lawmakers and leaked documents billions of dollars are missing from Iraqi Kurdistan’s oil revenues.