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A
coalition led by Iraq’s two main Kurdish parties
says it has won 59 per cent of the vote in elections
to the governing council of Taamim province, which
includes the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
Of the 440,000 ballots cast for the governing
council election, the Kirkuk Brotherhood List
received 260,000 votes, lawyer Ali Kadhir,
representing the bloc, said on February 4. That
suggests that the Brotherhood List will get
25 to 27 of the 41 seats on the provincial council.
It should also give the Kurdish parties a prominent
voice in choosing a governor for Taamim province.
The Kirkuk Brotherhood List was set up by the
Kurdistan Democratic Party, KDP, and the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan, PUK, specifically to run in
Kirkuk's provincial election. The list unites a
total of 12 different parties and includes Arabs and
Turkoman as well as Kurds, reflecting the region’s
ethnic diversity.
The Brotherhood List should not be confused with the
national-level Kurdistan Alliance List, the
coalition also led by the PUK and KDP which ran in
the election for the new Iraqi National Assembly.
The January 30 polls consisted of three different
elections: for the 275-member national parliament,
for councils in 18 governorates including Taamim,
and final for a 111-seat Kurdish regional assembly
that covers the three governorates known as
Kurdistan (Sulaimaniyah, Arbil and Dahuk).
Official election results have not yet been
announced by the Independent Electoral Commission of
Iraq, IECI.
Nihad Zainal, deputy head of the electoral
commission in Kirkuk, declined to comment on the
figures released by the Brotherhood List, saying
that only IECI headquarters in Baghdad was empowered
to discuss such matters.
Control over Kirkuk, home to Iraq’s northern
oilfields, has been a contentious election issue,
with Kurds, Turkoman and Arabs all claiming the city
as their own. Many Kurds see it as a potential
capital for a future autonomous region, although it
lies outside the borders of the current
Kurdish-controlled area.
Tension increased further after the IECI ruled that
more than 70,000 Kurds who have returned to the
region since being evicted under Saddam Hussein’s
policy of “Arabisation” would be able to vote
locally.
Ali Kadhir sees the election data he cited as a
victory for the returning Kurds over those Arabs who
were resettled here by Saddam. “This is a very
important victory for Kurds and for all the real
Kirkuk people,” he said.
“Every decision made by the governing council will
be for the Kurds and for all the parties in our
list. It will not be for the Arabs who moved here.”
Majid Izzat Juma, a member of the Iraqi Turkoman
Front coalition, and a former member of Kirkuk’s
city council, is unhappy with the IECI decision to
allow returning Kurds to vote.
“The elections were not in our interest, even though
we had a lot of supporters who went to the polling
stations,” he said. “The main problem was the IECI
decision to allow the displaced Kurds [to vote] -
that was not in our favour.”
Tahseen Mohammed Ali, who is political council chief
of the Turkoman Islamic Movement as well as head of
Kirkuk city council, said he thought the elections
went relatively well.
“Despite the fact that there were some problems, the
elections were generally successful,” he said.
The Kirkuk branch of the IECI has set up an
impartial committee made up of various political
parties to decide what to do in the town of Haweeja,
just southwest of Kirkuk, where polls remained open
until late in the evening on January 30, when they
should have closed at 5 pm. Polling stations did not
close until 11 pm because voters did not start
arriving until the afternoon.
A member of the committee set up to adjudicate on
the matter said it might rule that all 50,000 votes
in Haweeja could be declared legitimate, whatever
time they were cast, or else it could refer the
matter to the IECI in Baghdad.
Because of the hold-up over Haweeja, votes from the
Kirkuk area have not yet been sent to IECI
headquarters for the final count. Local election
officers said they expected the ballots to be sent
to Baghdad late on February 4.
This story has not been bylined because of concerns
for the security of IWPR reporters.
http://www.iwpr.net
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