Politics

Deputy Parliament speaker meets with diplomatic officials on upcoming parliamentary elections

Deputy Speaker Hawrami and Secretary Kahveci thanked the consuls general and other officials of the US, UK, EU, France, Germany, Netherlands and Czechia for their longstanding friendship.

Wladimir van Wilgenburg 2023/05/22 00:56

Kurdistan Parliament Deputy Speaker Dr. Hemin Hawrami and Secretary Muna Kahveci on Sunday met diplomatic officials to discuss the upcoming elections in the Kurdistan Region (Photo: Kurdistan Parliament)

Kurdistan Kurdistan Parliament Kurdish elections KDP PUK Hemin Hawrami Muna Kahveci

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Kurdistan Parliament Deputy Speaker Dr. Hemin Hawrami and Secretary Muna Kahveci on Sunday met with the consul generals and diplomatic officials of the US, UK, EU and several EU member states, and discussed the upcoming Kurdistan parliament elections.

@KurdistanParl Deputy Speaker Dr. @heminhawrami & Secretary @KahveciMuna in a meeting with diplomatic representatives of @USCGERBIL @ukinerbil @FranceBagdad @nlinkri @EUinIraq @CzechErbil @GermanyInKRI thanked them for longstanding support for Kurdistan Region, discussed next… pic.twitter.com/GvvJRqqZ0N
— Kurdistan Parliament (@KurdistanParl) May 21, 2023

Deputy Speaker Hawrami and Secretary Kahveci thanked the consuls general and other officials of the US, UK, EU, France, Germany, Netherlands and Czechia for their longstanding friendship and support for Kurdistan Region.

Dr. Hawrami explained the steps taken and meetings in Parliament over many months to find common ground and achieve compromises on all the outstanding election issues.

The Deputy Speaker underlined that the elections should be held on the date set by Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani on Nov. 18 this year.

“To avoid more delays, he said, the mandate of the Kurdistan High Election Commission should be renewed and the first reading should be held of all the bills submitted by the different political parties on amendments to the Election Law, Law No. 1 of 1992,” Hawrami reportedly said.

Moreover, Secretary Kahveci said that Kurdistan’s ethnic component communities want the elections to be held on the date set, and that they themselves should decide about the election system for their communities’ representatives.

Protecting the peaceful coexistence between all the ethnic and religious communities of Kurdistan Region is essential, she added.

The foreign representatives said that they welcomed the recent rapprochement between the ruling Kurdish political parties and underlined they hoped the election will take place this year.

The Kurdistan Region’s two ruling parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) on Sunday met to discuss numerous issues, including to hold the upcoming Kurdistan Region parliamentary election on ‘time’.

Earlier in a joint statement several diplomatic missions urged the Parliament and government to “take all necessary steps to ensure that elections take place without further postponement.”

The elections were earlier postponed for more than a year due to disputes between the PUK and the KDP.

The Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Iraq, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, in a briefing on May 18 in a briefing to the UN Security Council underlined that another postponement of the elections “would be detrimental to public trust.”