ARBIL – Preliminary results of elections in Iraqi Kurdistan, widely expected to keep two ruling parties in power despite an unprecedented opposition challenge, will be announced tomorrow, Iraq’s electoral commission said.
Kurdish opposition groups are complaining of violations in Saturday’s parliamentary and presidential vote, the first time Kurds have directly elected a leader of their mostly autonomous region, but voting officials say the poll was largely sound. Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission said the preliminary results would be available this evening.
They are not expected to upset the dominance of the region’s two powerful political parties or end a feud between minority Kurds and the Arab-led government in Baghdad over disputed land and control of vast oil resources.
The ruling parties – the Kurdish Democratic Party, led by Kurdish president Masoud Barzani, and the Democratic Union of Kurdistan of Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, a Kurd – ran jointly against alliances of smaller parties.
While Mr Barzani looked certain to easily defeat five rivals in the election, the vote marked a shift for Kurdistan, which critics say stifles political dissent, in the novel challenge presented by the opposition Change list.
Officials from Change, headed by Noshirwan Mustafa, a former Democratic Union of Kurdistan leader, said Kurdish authorities had executed a “premeditated plan to change the results for its own benefit”.
“A campaign of violations began on orders of the officials on the ground of the party in authority in all towns,” another opposition list, Reform and Services, said of the voting.
The electoral commission said after polls closed that voting was largely free of violations. It said yesterday that more than 300 complaints were being studied but that these were not likely to sway the overall outcome.