After the electoral silence, Kurdistan Interior Ministry warns street vendors against removing candidates' posters

Shafaq News/ The Director General of the Ministry of Interior in the Kurdistan Region, Hayman Mirani, said on Wednesday that the end of the promotional campaign for Kurdistan Parliament elections does not mean the removal of candidates' posters.

After 12 o'clock on Wednesday morning, the regions and cities of the Kurdistan Region entered the electoral silence after 20 days of the campaign, and a number of street vendors, iron traders and some people began collecting candidates' posters that contain iron for profit.

Mirani wrote on Facebook, “The cessation of the promotional campaign and entering the electoral silence does not mean removing the posters and taking the iron from them,” stressing that “these posters must remain until the day of general voting and the end of the entire electoral process, after which then the candidates and political entities are responsible for removing them.”

He emphasized that anyone who “removes the under the pretext of the campaign's end, or for taking the iron, will be held legally accountable and dealt with by the police.”

For her part, Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) spokeswoman Jumana Al-Ghallay said in an audio statement distributed to the media, “According to the Electoral Campaigns Law No. 2 of 2023, Article 5, candidates, political parties and alliances must remove all electoral advertising items within 30 days from the day after the general polling. Failure to do so will result in the removal of the materials at the violators' expense.

Last June, Iraqi Kurdistan Regional President Nechirvan Barzani issued a regional decree setting October 20, 2024, as the date for Kurdistan's parliamentary elections.

It is noteworthy that in June, President Barzani issued a Regional decree setting October 20, 2024, as the official date for the Kurdistan parliamentary elections.

The October vote is expected to elect 100 new lawmakers representing the governorates of Iraqi Kurdistan: Erbil (34 seats, including one for Christians and one for Turkmen), Halabja (three seats), Al-Sulaymaniyah (38 seats, including one for Christians and one for Turkmen), and Duhok (25 seats, including one for Christians).

According to the Electoral Commission, a total of 1,190 candidates are running in the upcoming elections. These candidates are distributed across two coalitions, 13 parties, and include 85 independents, alongside 39 candidates representing minority groups, forming a total of 139 electoral lists.

The overall number of eligible voters amounts to 2,899,878. Of this total, 2,683,618 are registered for general voting, while 215,960 are listed forspecialvoting.