Artists join race for Kurdistan parliament

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Several prominent artists and intellectuals have entered the Kurdistan parliamentary election race, campaigning with promises to restore the prominence of Kurdish culture and support artists.

The actress Rupak Abdulqadir is a candidate for The People’s Front (Baray Gal) party.

“We will work on bringing back the glory of artists and original Kurdish art,” she said, explaining her intent to focus on introducing laws that support the arts.

The People’s Front was founded by Lahur Talabany in January. A former co-leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), he was formally ousted from that post in late 2021 because of a rift in the party.

“Art belongs to all Kurdish people. We artists have served the mother language and the people of Kurdistan with our art,” said Rekesh Seirani, a singer running for the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Duhok.

This is the first regional election that divides the Kurdistan Region into four constituencies after Iraq’s federal court ruled in February that Article 9 of the constitution, which designated the Kurdistan Region as a single electoral constituency, was "unconstitutional." The four constituencies are the provinces of Erbil, Sulaimani, Duhok, and Halabja.

“I believe that native artists will receive native votes,” said Farhang Ghafur, a KDP candidate and head of Erbil’s culture directorate.

Hardi Salah, a singer from the PUK who has been involved in politics for several years, is also running.

“The parliament must protect the glory of artists and create an environment where they have a good financial situation and do not have to diminish the quality of their art for the sake of making money,” said Bukhari Jamil, the only artist running for the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU). “I want to return hope to them.”

Writer and painter Farhad Pirbal is running as an independent candidate. He holds a doctorate in the history of Kurdish literature from Sorbonne University in Paris. He has been a lecturer at Salahaddin University since 1994 and has authored dozens of books and poems.

He is campaigning on a promise to put power into the hands of the people. “I will dissolve the parliament: instead of parties, I will bring the people into the parliament,” he wrote in a recent post on Facebook.|

In March 2018, Pirbal was arrested on charges of defaming a Turkmen member of the Kurdistan parliament. His family later issued a statement apologizing for “his inappropriate and unfair behavior,” attributing his comments to “psychological problems and drug addiction.”

Voters will go to the polls on October 20. Official campaigning began last week and continues until October 15. Nearly 2.9 million people are eligible to vote.

A total of 1,191 candidates are vying for the 100-seat Kurdistan parliament, according to the Iraqi High Electoral Commission (IHEC). That number includes 823 men, 368 women, and 38 candidates from minority communities. Among them are six artists.

In the 2018 election, the KDP won 45 seats, the PUK secured 21, while the Change Movement (Gorran) took 12 seats. The KIU won 5 seats.

Bashar Aziz contributed to this report.