Page 9 - ARUBA TODAY

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WORLD NEWS Monday 1 october 2018
Iraq's Kurds hold elections for regional parliament

By SALAR SALIM infighting. Those two fac- tered fighting. The loss of
Associated Press tions are expected to win the disputed territories was
IRBIL, Iraq (AP) — Iraq's self- the lion's share of the vote. a major blow for Barzani,
ruled Kurdish region held its By noon, turnout was low, who had championed the
long-delayed parliamen- with many blaming the referendum.
tary elections on Sunday, regional election commis- The Iraqi government re-
a year after a vote for in- sion's new requirement that jected the referendum, as
dependence sparked a voters show two forms of did Iraq's neighbors and the
punishing backlash from ID. Bashdar Ali, an observer international community,
Baghdad, leaving Kurdish from the Shams Network including the United States.
leaders deeply divided. for Election Observation in The Baghdad government,
More than 700 candidates Iraq, said the commission as well as neighboring Tur-
are vying for 111 seats in the issued the guidelines late key and Iran, shut down
elections, in which nearly Saturday night. the Kurdish region's airports Iraqi Kurdish women cast their ballots during parliamentary
3.5 million Kurds were eli- Iraq's Kurds established and border crossings in re- elections, in Irbil, Iraq, Sunday, Sept. 30, 2018.
gible to vote. Eleven seats a regional government sponse to the referendum. Associated Press
are reserved for religious in 1992 after the U.S. en- They were reopened after
and ethnic minorities: five forced a no-fly zone across a federal court dismissed parties. the poor people."
for Christians, five for Turk- the north following the Gulf the referendum. "What I am hoping for is to Ali Arab Sultan, a teacher,
men candidates and one War. After the 2003 U.S.-led The fallout from the referen- have a better life," Ismail said voting is a "national
for the Armenian commu- invasion that ousted Sad- dum has left Kurdish leaders Mohammed said after vot- and religious duty, so that
nity. dam Hussein, the Kurds bitterly divided, and has ex- ing. "I am a retired man but we may have a better fu-
It's unclear how much secured constitutional rec- acerbated a long-running I am asking that they fix the ture." "Let's hope that God
change the elections could ognition of their autonomy financial crisis in the region, salaries for everybody, not will change the current situ-
bring or whether the vote and gained more power. fueling widespread anger only me — for all the gov- ation into a better one," he
would only cement Iraqi Since then, they have been at the main Kurdish political ernment employees and said.q
Kurdish divisions further. at loggerheads with Bagh-
Polls closed in the early dad over rights to develop
evening and unofficial re- and to export oil and gas
sults were expected to start as well as the so-called dis-
coming in later on Sunday. puted territories — lands
The last parliamentary stretching from the Syr-
elections in Iraq's Kurdish re- ian border to Iran that the
gion were in 2013, but the Kurds claim as part of their
assembly stopped meet- autonomous region, in-
ing in 2015 amid internal cluding the northern city of
political tensions and the Kirkuk, a major oil hub.
war against the Islamic The Kurds took control of
State group. The political Kirkuk and other disputed
deadlock also delayed territories in the summer of
new elections, which were 2014 as the Islamic State
originally planned for last group rampaged across
November. northern and central Iraq.
Iraqi Kurdish politics have But after last September's
long been dominated by referendum, in which more
Masoud Barzani's Kurdis- than 90 percent voted for
tan Democratic Party and independence, federal
the rival Patriotic Union of forces retook Kirkuk and
Kurdistan, which is riven by other areas with only scat-