SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Senior Iraqi officials agreed on Thursday to postpone early parliamentary elections scheduled for June 6, a source in the Iraqi parliament said.
The source told Esta Media Network that the officials made the decision during a meeting of the three presidencies in Baghdad earlier on Thursday.
Iraqi President Barham Salih, Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, Parliament Speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi, Head of Iraqi Judicial Council Fayiq Zidan held a meeting with members of Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) to discuss the early parliamentary elections.
The U.N. Envoy to Iraq Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert also participated in the meeting.
“The participants have reached the decision to postpone the early parliamentary elections to September,” the source told Esta Media Network on condition of anonymity.
The Iraqi presidency said in a statement earlier that the IHEC had presented a “timetable of technical processes and timings for holding early elections” during the meeting.
“The commission confirmed that it would give sufficient time to candidates, political alliances, new political forces and youths to complete the legal registration procedures and submit candidate lists,” the statement said.
The Iraqi presidency, however, didn’t provide details about any decision been made to postpone the elections.
The senior Iraqi officials also held a meeting on Tuesday to discuss the parliamentary elections. They agreed to take all necessary measures that help hold the early election, according to a statement released by the Iraqi presidency.
Haider al-Jaber, Head of Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr’s media office, told reporters that “instigators of sedition” had called to cancel or postpone the elections, adding that Sadr warns against postponing the elections.
Sadr also hopes that, “Everyone shows wisdom and works together for the success of these elections,” Jaber said.
“Sadr supports the campaign led by the prime minister against corruption,” he noted, saying all parties must support the campaign and refer the corrupt to the judiciary.
In July, premier Kadhimi called for early elections to take place on June 6, 2021, which is one of the main demands of anti-government protesters who organized months of mass demonstrations beginning in October 2020.
In November, the Iraqi president ratified a new election law aimed at giving political independents a better chance of winning seats in parliament.
Salih stressed the need for free, fair and transparent balloting that would restore the Iraqi citizens’ confidence in the legitimacy of the process.
The new law changes each of the country’s 18 provinces into several electoral districts and prevents parties from running on unified lists, which has in the past helped them easily sweep all the seats in a specific province. Instead, the seats would go to whoever gets the most votes in the electoral districts.
Iraq’s Parliament passed the final version of the new law in November despite objections from some political parties.
The vote is held every four years, but anti-government protesters demanded early elections.
Drafting a new election law has been a key demand of the hundreds of thousands of protesters who took to the streets in Baghdad and southern Iraq in October 2019. The protesters have called for an end to endemic corruption by a political class that is largely seen as having squandered Iraq’s resources through greed and mismanagement over the past years.
