ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq's legislative elections delivered unexpected shocks, with several high-profile figures — including current and former speakers of the parliament, the oil minister, and the country’s oldest political party — failing to win seats.
One of the biggest surprises was Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the sitting parliament speaker. Running on the Sovereignty Alliance list in Baghdad, Mashhadani received just 3,864 votes, falling short of the threshold needed to enter parliament.
Former speaker Salim al-Jabouri, who held the position between 2014 and 2018, also failed in his bid for a comeback. Running on the Suqoruna (Our Hawks) list in Diyala, he secured only 5,767 votes.
Major General Yahya Rasool, former spokesperson for the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and a candidate for Nouri al-Maliki’s State of Law Coalition, won just 1,392 votes, also falling short.
The setbacks extended to the cabinet level. Hayyan Abdul Ghani, Iraq’s minister of oil and a candidate for State of Law in Basra, earned 6,135 votes.
Iraq’s oldest political party, the Communist Party, was also shut out of the parliament, including its leader Raed Fahmi. The party slammed the vote in a strongly-worded statement.
"This is the first time since 2003 that the civil voice has been so widely excluded from parliament, a dangerous indicator of the nature of the political, economic, and social environment in which the elections were held," it said.
"This exclusion does not target a specific party, but rather strikes at the very core of the democratic process itself, which, due to the quota system and corruption, has been transformed into a mere formality, devoid of substance. It undermines the presence of all democratic civil forces that advocate for building a state based on institutions,” it added.
Many sitting members of the parliament who had previously run as independents or as part of the Imtidad Movement that grew out of the October 2019 protests, lost their seats. In this election, they competed on Shiite lists. Among them were Kadhim Musa, Fatima al-Issawi, Nisan al-Zayer, Saeb al-Hajami, Qasim al-Qarghouli, Hamid al-Shablawi, Falah al-Hilali, Nour Nafie, Dawood Eidan, and Mohammed Nouri.
The preliminary results from the electoral commission also revealed a striking pattern: a large number of candidates received extremely low vote counts. Fifty-six candidates received just one vote each, including eight candidates in Basra. Another 54 candidates received only two votes, and 51 received three votes across the country.
The results underscore the shifting political landscape in Iraq, where voter turnout, party fragmentation, and public dissatisfaction continue to shape electoral outcomes.
Iraq’s electoral body announced the preliminary results on Wednesday, with sitting premier Sudani’s coalition securing the top position with over 1.3 million votes, equivalent to 45 seats, according to Rudaw’s calculations.
The parliamentary elections held on Tuesday were the sixth since the collapse of the Baath regime in 2003. Voter turnout exceeded 55 percent, surpassing expectations and the 41 percent that voted in the October 2021 polls.
Of 329 seats in the parliament, nine are reserved for minorities.