Following statements by the winning parties of the Kurdistan Region’s parliamentary elections welcoming the final results, trailing parties on Sunday rejected the outcome of the vote. At midnight on Saturday, the electoral commission announced the official results of the regional parliamentary election. The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) lead the polls by a large margin, securing 45 seats out of a total 111 seats available, followed by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) with 21 seats. The parties who rejected the results are the Change Movement (Gorran), winner of 12 seats, New Generation, which won eight seats, and the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU), which belonged to the Toward Reform Coalition that won five.
“We reject the results,” Hakim Ubaid, a senior member of Gorran told Kurdistan 24 on Sunday.
“Similar to the Iraqi parliamentary elections, extensive fraud has been committed in this vote by the KDP and PUK,” Ubaid alleged.
In the outgoing parliament, Gorran had twice as many seats, 24, compared to their showing this election and the KIU alone had six.
“The Independent High Electoral and Referendum Commission [IHERC] has not been able to receive the backing of most of the commissioners” to validate the results and “has only achieved a simple majority,” KIU said in a statement on Sunday.
Full Article: Parties contest final results of Kurdistan election following winners’ approval.
