BAGHDAD — Iraq’s Kurds threatened Tuesday to boycott national elections, days after the country’s Sunni vice president threatened to veto the newly passed election law needed to hold the January vote.
Barely a week after the long-delayed legislation was passed, the hard-fought deal appears to be hitting a major roadblock, threatening to derail Iraq’s national parliamentary elections and possibly slow U.S. plans to withdraw.
The Kurds and Sunnis are unsatisfied with the allocation of seats in the next parliament and are demanding more spots for their respective constituencies.
The boycott and veto threat come after lawmakers haggled for weeks over the election legislation they finally passed on Nov. 8, much to the relief of Iraqi political leaders and the U.S.
“We knew that the Sunnis were unhappy; they made that clear from the beginning,” said Joost Hiltermann, Mideast director of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group think tank. “Nobody knew that the Kurds were unhappy too.”
The Kurds originally supported the election law, voting in favor of it last week in parliament. But they say it was only over the weekend that they found out that their three provinces in northern Iraq had received fewer seats than they believe they deserved.
“Unless this seat allocation formula is reconsidered in a just manner, the people of (the) Kurdistan Region will be compelled to boycott the election,” said a statement posted on the website of the office of Massoud Barzani, the Kurdistan regional president.
