SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Iraqi Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) said on Sunday that it had proposed to postpone early parliamentary elections to October 16 in an effort to complete technical preparations.
The IHEC said in a letter to Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi that the proposal was an attempt to make preparations so as to ‘hold integrated, fair and free elections”.
It added that the extension would also give more time to political alliances and candidates to complete the registration process.
“The renewal of biometric voter cards and technical preparations need more time,” the commission stated.
IHEC spokesperson Jumana al-Ghalai said earlier on Sunday that more than 25 million people are eligible to vote in the elections, but only 15 million voters have so far registered in the biometric system.
In July, Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi called for early elections to take place on June 6, 2021, which was one of the main demands of anti-government protesters who organized months of mass demonstrations beginning in October 2020.
Iraqi President Barham Salih in November ratified a new election law aimed at giving political independents a better chance of winning seats in parliament.
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.
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.
On Thursday, the Iraqi president held a meeting with Kadhimi, Parliament Speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi, Head of Iraqi Judicial Council Fayiq Zidan and IHEC members. U.N. envoy to Iraq Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert also participated in the meeting.
A source in the Iraqi parliament told Esta Media Network that the senior officials had agreed to postpone the early parliamentary elections to September.
