SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani said on Sunday he hopes all Iraqis will vote in Iraq’s early election.
Barzani cast his ballot in Erbil as the first Kurdish official in the Kurdistan Region, just a minute after polls opened for Iraqis to vote in the general election.
“I hope all people will exercise their legal duty,” Barzani said in a press conference.
“We want to resolve all the issues, and the stability of Iraq is very important for the Kurdistan Region,” he added.
Barzani noted that the Kurdistan Region would also hold its parliamentary election on time.
Polling stations opened in Iraqi provinces and the Kurdistan Region at 7:00 a.m. on Sunday.
A total of 329 seats are up for grabs in the election, which was moved forward from 2022 as a concession to youth-led pro-democracy protests that erupted in late 2019.
There are fears voter turnout could drop below the 44.5 percent figure registered in 2018.
More than 24 million citizens are eligible to vote. They are supposed to present a biometric card for what was conceived as a fully electronic voting process.
As many as 3,226 candidates are in the running, including nearly 950 women.
One quarter of seats are reserved for female candidates, and nine for minorities including Christians and Yazidis.
A new single-member constituency system is supposed to boost independents and reduce traditional political blocs, largely centered on religious, ethnic and clan affiliations.
Hundreds of international and Arab League observers will monitor the election on Friday.
On Friday, more than 821,000 voters out of 1,196,524 members of the Iraqi and Kurdish security forces, prisoners and displaced persons cast their ballots in the special voting for Iraq’s parliamentary election.
This year nationals living abroad will not be voting.
