Kurdistan
The Kurdistan Justice Group (Komal) launched its election campaign in Ranya on September 12, 2021. Photo: Rudaw
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Kurdistan Justice Group (Komal) kicked off its election campaign with an event in Ranya on Sunday.
The party, contesting its first election since it rebranded and dropped the word ‘Islamic’ from its name, is fielding five candidates, hoping to attract votes under the slogan “Join us for justice.”
“I will become a representative for all. All the supporters who have been betrayed by their colors [parties], I will become their representative as well, a true representative to defend the legal and constitutional rights of people of Kurdistan, that some sides have made into wealth and status for themselves,” said Komal candidate Soran Omer.
There were attempts to form a broad Kurdish coalition for the elections, but the parties failed to find common ground and, apart from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Change (Gorran) alliance, will compete for votes individually.
Komal “has not formed any alliance… because the demands that we had and what they had couldn’t be agreed upon,” Bestoon Hamasalih, the head of Komal’s election office, said in May. The Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU) also said they had tried to form an alliance, but “it was futile.”
Also on Sunday, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) launched their campaign in Kirkuk. The party is returning to the disputed province after it left in 2017, but it is unhappy with the new election law that vastly increased the number of electoral districts. Head of the party Masoud Barzani said he was worried that distribution of seats was done without recent demographic information.
“We have a lot of comments on the election law and the distribution of seats in the provinces, which were not fair at all and were not correct because there were no statistics. But due to public interest and to keep KDP balanced, we decided to participate in the elections,” he said in a speech on Sunday.
The KDP will field 55 candidates in eleven provinces.
Iraq was due to hold parliamentary elections in 2022. Early elections were one of the demands of protests that began in October 2019 across central and southern Iraq and Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi called for the vote to be held on June 6 this year. In January, the Council of Ministers decided to push the date back to October 10 to give parties more time to register. The campaign so far has been muted and turnout is expected to be low.
The party, contesting its first election since it rebranded and dropped the word ‘Islamic’ from its name, is fielding five candidates, hoping to attract votes under the slogan “Join us for justice.”
“I will become a representative for all. All the supporters who have been betrayed by their colors [parties], I will become their representative as well, a true representative to defend the legal and constitutional rights of people of Kurdistan, that some sides have made into wealth and status for themselves,” said Komal candidate Soran Omer.
There were attempts to form a broad Kurdish coalition for the elections, but the parties failed to find common ground and, apart from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Change (Gorran) alliance, will compete for votes individually.
Komal “has not formed any alliance… because the demands that we had and what they had couldn’t be agreed upon,” Bestoon Hamasalih, the head of Komal’s election office, said in May. The Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU) also said they had tried to form an alliance, but “it was futile.”
Also on Sunday, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) launched their campaign in Kirkuk. The party is returning to the disputed province after it left in 2017, but it is unhappy with the new election law that vastly increased the number of electoral districts. Head of the party Masoud Barzani said he was worried that distribution of seats was done without recent demographic information.
“We have a lot of comments on the election law and the distribution of seats in the provinces, which were not fair at all and were not correct because there were no statistics. But due to public interest and to keep KDP balanced, we decided to participate in the elections,” he said in a speech on Sunday.
The KDP will field 55 candidates in eleven provinces.
Iraq was due to hold parliamentary elections in 2022. Early elections were one of the demands of protests that began in October 2019 across central and southern Iraq and Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi called for the vote to be held on June 6 this year. In January, the Council of Ministers decided to push the date back to October 10 to give parties more time to register. The campaign so far has been muted and turnout is expected to be low.
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