| | | | The Iraqi Independent Election Committee has said that it might be too late to revise the list of political parties approved to run in the January 30 as there are only two weeks before the polling day.
The two pro-PKK parties, The Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party and the Democratic Re-structuring Party, have been included on the ballot paper despite the objections of Ankara.
According to Sandra Khadhouri, the press officer for the Independent Election Committee, a final decision on whether the two parties can contest the election would be given by the committee.
“The decision on the 111 political parties participating was taken by the committee in Iraq and the election papers were printed in Baghdad,” Khadhouri said.
However, it is seen as unlikely that the two parties would be removed from the ballot paper due to lack of time.
Meanwhile, representatives of Iraq’s ethnic Turkomen community say that they might boycott the general election as they claim that 72,000 Iraqi Kurds have been moved from other regions of the country and enrolled on electoral lists in Kirkuk. There have been numerous allegations that Iraqi Kurds are trying to shift the balance of power in Kirkuk by driving out the Turkomen residents and increasing the number of Kurds in the area.
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