Iraqi Kurdistan Voting In Regional Parliamentary Election On Sunday

CAIRO (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th September, 2018) Iraq's Kurdistan Region is holding regional parliamentary election on Sunday, the first time since the defeat of the Islamic State terrorist group (banned in Russia) in the country and the autonomy's independence referendum.

Over 3 million voters are eligible to vote in the election, with some 700 candidates running for 111 parliamentary seats, according to the Kurdistan Independent High Election and Referendum Commission.

The election commission announced low turnout numbers midday, which is commonplace for regional elections, local media reported, noting that the UN secretary-general's special representative for Iraq, Jan Kubis, however, expressed hope that the final turnout would be high.

The main frontrunners are the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), as well as the Change Movement (Gorran) and the Kurdistan Islamic Group (Komal).

The election comes only a day before the regional parliament is set to elect a new regional president out of seven candidates.

The president is then to pick up a candidate for the post of prime minister from the ranks of the largest parliamentary faction.

The parliamentary election was initially slated for November 2017, but was postponed due to deep political crisis caused by the September independence referendum which saw around 93 percent of the voters supporting secession from Iraq. The latter refused to recognize its results, having imposed sanctions on the Kurdish regional government and conducted a military operation on the territories disputed between Erbil and Baghdad.