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Gorran movement in Iraqi Kurdistan challenges election results

IRAQI Kurdistan’s opposition Gorran Movement has rejected the final results of last month’s regional parliamentary elections amid accusations of fraud and vote-rigging.

According to the revised results of the September 30 poll, Masoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) came out on top, winning 45 seats, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) took 21 seats in the 111-seat Kurdistan regional parliament.

But the final results were rejected by four of the nine members of the electoral commission, who were concerned by the conduct of the investigations into more than 1,000 complaints.

KDP deputy president Nechirvan Barzani celebrated the results as “a great leap forward” and said he is working to form a coalition government.

He claimed the results showed that “the majority of the people of Kurdistan support a strong and stable government under the leadership of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.”

PUK acting leader Kosrat Rasul said it was time to “turn a new page” after the result, adding that the interests of the Kurdish nation should be placed above narrow party interests.

“Regional changes and possibilities lying ahead require us all to sit together and participate in the formation of the next government in the Kurdistan region,” he said in a statement.

The two parties have dominated Kurdish politics in northern Iraq for decades, with loyalties split along tribal lines between the Barzani clan-led KDP and the Talibani-led PUK.

But they have come under increasing criticism for their running of the semi-autonomous region, with calls for their coalition government to step aside following a controversial independence referendum last year.

The Gorran Movement, which saw its number of seats halved from 24 to just 12, said it rejected the results in their entirety, accusing the KDP and PUK of colluding to tamper with the results.

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