ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Kurdistan Region’s ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) has floated the idea of early legislative elections, as the political deadlock in forming the Region’s tenth cabinet continues despite 18 months having passed since the regional elections.
Ahmed Kani, a member of the KDP’s Central Committee, said on Thursday that “early elections might be the solution” to the ongoing impasse, suggesting that the results could differ this time, hinting that his party could perform stronger.
For his part, Saadi Ahmed Pira, a senior member of the KDP’s rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), told Rudaw on Thursday that “repeating the elections would cost a lot of money,” arguing that such funds would be better allocated to the development of the Kurdistan Region.
Affirming that his party is “not afraid of repeating the elections,” Pira noted that intra-Kurdish disputes are the main threat to the Kurdistan Region as an entity, emphasizing that any future cabinet “must include both the PUK and the KDP and be a broad-based government.”
The Kurdistan Region held parliamentary elections in October 2024, in which the KDP won 39 of the 100 seats, while the PUK secured 23. With no party holding an outright majority, negotiations to form a new cabinet have dragged on for a year and a half, mainly due to disputes over governance mechanisms and key posts.
Meanwhile, Kurdish opposition parties - the New Generation Movement (NGM), the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU), and the National Stance Movement (Halwest) - hold fifteen, four, and two seats respectively, while the Kurdistan Region Alliance coalition and the Change Movement (Gorran) each secured one seat.
The remaining five seats are reserved for minority quotas, divided between three Christian representatives and two Turkmen members.
Hiwa Nasradin, Deputy Head of the Kurdistan Parliament’s Diwan, told Rudaw on Thursday that the main legal conditions for dissolving the current parliament include its “failure to convene a first session and elect a presidency within 45 days [of its election], which would allow the Kurdistan Region’s President to dissolve parliament.”
While a first session was held in December 2024, it failed to produce significant decisions, as lawmakers did not elect a speaker or their two deputies. No further sessions have been held since, although the December session has remained adjourned.
Another condition would be “the resignation of half plus one of the parliament’s members [or more], which would lead to parliamentary paralysis and subsequent dissolution,” Nasradin added.
If the KDP indeed spearheads a push for parliament dissolution and early elections, it would need to coordinate with other members of the Kurdish parliament alongside its 39 seats, some of whom have in recent months expressed dissatisfaction over the legislature’s continued paralysis.