Baghdad, November 25: Iraq’s electoral officials rule out the possibility of holding parliamentary elections before the end of January as required by the country’s constitution.
“In all cases, the possibility of holding the vote in January is over,” the head of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, Faraj al-Haidari, told Reuters.
The remark comes after a draft of the country’s new electoral bill passed by parliament this month was vetoed by Iraq’s Sunni Muslim Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi.
Al-Hashimi, who has been urging the allocation of seats to Iraqis living abroad, is expected to oppose an amended version agreed earlier this week.
The main Shia and Kurdish factions voted for a compromise solution on Monday, which was passed despite continuing opposition from Sunnis.
But a statement from al-Hashimi’s office condemned the amendment as “unfair and unconstitutional”.
The member of the country’s presidential council said he would “deal with the new law as he did with the previous one to protect the national interest and bolster democracy,” according to the statement.
But the president of the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, Jalal Talabani, who had also threatened to veto the law, voiced support for the amended version, which allocates more seats to Kurds.
While MPs seem determined to outweigh a second veto with a three-fifths majority, the law needs to be approved 60 days before any election can be held.
But the Independent Electoral Commission said that whatever happened, it was now too late to organize a vote by the end of January.
The commission will wait for the dispute to end before setting the election date.
——Agencies