Confusion over five-day election silence as campaigning for Kurdistan Region poll gets underway

ERBIL — The Iraqi Independent High Electoral Commission has announced that the official campaign for the Kurdistan parliamentary elections, set for Oct. 20, will begin on tomorrow. The campaign will end on Oct. 15, leaving five days before election day for an extended silence period—a notable change from past elections. It also leaves fewer than three weeks for the official campaign period.

Omar Ahmed, head of IHEC, confirmed the timeline at a press conference in Baghdad. “The campaign for the Kurdistan parliamentary elections will officially start on Wednesday and run for three weeks,” Ahmed said. The campaign period, which was initially supposed to start earlier, was delayed.

This new five-day silence period differs from previous elections. In the 2018 Kurdistan parliamentary elections, campaigning ended 48 hours before the vote, in line with the Kurdistan Election Law of 1992. During Iraq’s most recent parliamentary election in October 2021, campaigning ended just 24 hours before voting began.

The February ruling by Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court that decreed the Kurdistan Region’s own commission would not oversee the vote may also play a part. Iraq’s federal IHEC is now responsible for overseeing the elections, but the same Kurdistan Election Law is still in place.

Jumana Ghalay, IHEC’s spokesperson, explained the decision to extend the silence period: “The law mandates that election campaigns must end 48 hours before special voting, which starts on October 18.” However, the law only specifies that campaigning must stop “48 hours before the voting process,” without explicitly referring to special voting.

Handren Mohammed Salih, head of the Kurdistan Region’s electoral commission, which oversaw the 2018 elections, disagreed with IHEC’s interpretation. “The law refers to the general election, not special elections. Campaigns should have ended 48 hours before the general election, meaning on October 18, not October 15,” Salih told 964media.

Salih further explained that even if the 48-hour rule applied to special voting, the campaign should have ended on October 16 at 7 a.m., when special voting begins on October 18. Special voting allows security forces and prisoners, around 216,000 eligible voters, to vote early to ensure security on election day.

Despite these objections, Ghalay stood by the commission’s decision, saying, “We have decided on that, and that is all.”

IHEC’s media head, Emad Jamil, also defended the ruling, explaining that “the campaign is set to end 48 hours before the voting process begins,” as special elections are part of that process.