The Kurdish political parties are expected to discuss and decide whether to postpone the upcoming parliamentary elections in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region .
A man shows his inked finger after casting his vote for the parliamentary elections at a polling station in Arbil, Iraq on September 30, 2018. (Getty Images)
The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) Special Representative Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, President of the Kurdistan Region Nechirvan Barzani, and the main political parties in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region (IKR) are convening for the third time on Wednesday to discuss the region’s upcoming parliamentary elections scheduled for October 1st, Kurdish officials said.
The meeting will also be attended by Plasschaert, Fawzi Hariri, the Kurdistan Region Presidency chief of staff, told Rudaw, a Kurdish news network close to Barzani.
Today’s meeting is the third round of talks about the region’s elections that are expected to be postponed until next year. Plasschaert previously headed a meeting with top officials from the Kurdish political parties in Erbil on 26 May in a bid to reach an agreement on the upcoming elections. She also participated in another meeting with political parties on June 9.
The meeting comes after demonstrations across the Kurdistan region were held on Saturday. Demonstrators protested against attempts to postpone the region’s parliamentary elections. Kurdish security forces have responded by using tear gas and arrested hundreds of demonstrators, journalists and several lawmakers as well as senior officials from the New Generation Movement- an opposition party that had called the demonstrations.
“The agenda of the meeting is the elections of the Kurdistan parliament and ways to reach a suitable solution for this issue,” Yassin Hama Ali, head of the elections commission at the Kurdish Movement of Change (Gorran) told The New Arab by phone. He also clarified that he is not…