Iraq sets November 6 for first provincial elections in ten years

The Iraqi Parliament set Monday for November 6 the next elections to the provincial councils, a first in ten years for these authorities which had been dissolved in the wake of the anti-power protest movement of 2019.

“

,” the deputies decided overnight from Sunday to Monday, according to a press release from the Parliament’s media service.

Federal state

They concern 15 of the 18 Iraqi provinces, the three provinces of the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan (north) not being concerned.

In a federal Iraq, the provincial councils have relatively significant power.

They allocate budgets in the health, transport or education sectors.

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The November 6 election will be the first of its kind since 2013. At the time, the lists of then Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki came out on top.

The next provincial elections should have taken place in 2018, but were postponed.

And, a year later, when a vast and unprecedented anti-power movement shook Iraq, the protesters had demanded and obtained the dissolution of the provincial councils.

Because part of the opposition and civil society sees these councils as breeding grounds for corruption.

These entities, created by the 2005 Constitution after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, “

,” independent MP Alaa al-Rikabi, who came out of the 2019 protest movement, told AFP.