The extended mandate of the independent Kurdistan parliament was declared unlawful by Iraq’s top court on Tuesday, invalidating all actions done by the body since last year.
It is the most recent dispute between Kurdistan’s leaders and the federal government of Iraq, whose officials on Saturday criticized changes to the federal budget that would influence oil sales from the region in northern Iraq.
The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Iraqi Kurdistan’s two major political parties, disagreed, forcing the assembly to extend its term by another year before the elections that were originally slated for late 2022. New elections were slated to take place in November of this year.
Judge Jassem Mohammed Aboud, head of the highest federal court in Baghdad, ruled that the chamber’s mandate’s one-year extension was illegal. As a result, the Kurdistan parliament’s actions made since October 2022 “are constitutionally invalid,” according to Aboud.
His decision followed several opposition lawmakers from Kurdistan who had filed a lawsuit in court over the mandate extension. As a result of the KDP scheduling a late vote to activate the commission overseeing the elections, lawmakers in Kurdistan’s parliament started fighting last week. PUK legislators requested a delay in the vote.
In the 111-seat house, the KDP now controls the largest bloc with 45 seats, followed by the PUK with 21. The court’s decision, according to researcher Shivan Fazil of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, “is unprecedented” since it also invalidates “the government that has been sworn in” before the regional parliament.
