KDP emerges from elections as the biggest political party in Iraq

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) has emerged from Iraq's October parliamentary elections as the biggest party in Iraq following the Iraqi Independent High Election Commission's (IHEC) preliminary counting of all the votes. 

The KDP participated in the elections as a single party, not as part of any coalition, and won the most seats as a single party, making it the biggest single political party in all of Iraq. 

The Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's list won 73 seats in the election, but that included a number of different parties and politicians. 

The KDP Politburo intends to meet with other political parties in the Kurdistan Region to discuss the formation of the next Iraqi government and unity among them in Baghdad. 

"Although the KDP is the winner of the elections, it will continue seeking the unification of the Kurdish voice in Baghdad," Blend Ismail, KDP Leadership Council member, told Kurdistan 24 on Sunday. "The Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani is going to call up the political parties soon." 

Ismail stressed that the Kurds will keep the Iraqi presidency.

"The Kurdish political parties will compromise over which one of them will get the position," he said. 

In a related development, Khamis al-Khanjar, the leader of the Sunni al-Azim alliance, visited KDP President Masoud Barzani in the Kurdistan Region capital in Erbil on Sunday. The two leaders discussed the post-election stage and expressed their hope that the election results will help stabilize the country and fix its troubled political process.

A survey conducted just before the elections by Al-Bayan Center for Planning and Studies found that the KDP would most likely remain the largest party in Iraq. Al-Bayan telephoned citizens in each of Iraq's 19 provinces for the survey and concluded that only three coalitions (not individual political parties) were larger than the leading Kurdish party.