Kurdistan won’t participate in polls unless allocation mechanism is reconsidered

ARBIL / IraqiNews.com: Iraq’s Kurdistan region will not take part in the country’s upcoming parliamentary elections unless the seat allocation mechanism is reconsidered, a senior local official said on Tuesday. “If the seat allocation mechanism for provinces is not reconsidered, the people of the Kurdistan region will be obliged not to participate in the elections,” Fouad Hussein, a senior official in the office of Kurdish regional President Massoud al-Barazani, told IraqiNews.com news agency. “President Barazani said that it is impossible to accept a seat allocation mechanism that is based on the data contained in ration cards,” Hussein argued. “This aims to reduce the number of Kurdish parliamentarians in the Iraqi Parliament…,” Hussein noted. SS (P) 1