Two Kaka'i candidates in Kirkuk and Nineveh guaranteed seats in the provincial council based on the votes they collected for the first time, noting that the Kaka'i component was not allocated seats under the quota system.
According to the final results of the Iraqi provincial council elections that took place on December 18, 2023, Hoshyar Hijran Al-Kaka’i from (Kirkuk Our Strength and Our Will Alliance) won 7,108 votes, and Muhammad Jassim Al-Kaka’i (Nineveh People’s Union Alliance) won 3,738 votes in seats in Kirkuk and Nineveh provinces.
The two alliances were mainly formed by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan PUK, one of the leading Kurdish political parties, led by Bafel Jalal Talabani.
Hoshyar Hijran, who won a seat in the Kirkuk Provincial Council, told (KirkukNow), “Winning a seat in the current session of the Provincial Council as a Kaka’i candidate is important so that I can serve them in all sectors, and pointed our priorities are to seek to rehabilitate the Kaka’i villages, and to address the problem of lands and lifting the night curfew in the Kakai areas.”
The Kaka'is participated with eight candidates in the provincial council elections within the framework of the lists of the PUK and the Kurdistan Democratic Party KDP, four of them in Kirkuk Governorate, three in Diyala Governorate, and one in Nineveh, all of whom won 18,000 votes.
Kaka'i, Yarsanism, or Ahl Alhaq, is a secretive monotheist spiritual religion that has no special places for worship, a religion mostly practiced in Iraq and Iran. Kaka'i followers are about 100,000, mostly found in the northern provinces of Sulaymaniyah, Kirkuk, Erbil, and Ninewa up to Diyala in the middle of Iraq.
Yarsanism has not been officially recognized in the Iraqi constitution yet it has been in the semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan Region IKR. Their villages and towns were a target for extremist militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ISIS who persecuted them as “idol worshippers.”
The votes collected by the Kakai candidates were distributed as follows: over 10,000 votes in Kirkuk, about 4,000 votes in Diyala, and over 3,700 votes in Nineveh, but these votes guaranteed them only two seats in Kirkuk and Nineveh.
Muhammad Jassim, the Kaka’i candidate who won a seat in Nineveh Governorate, told KirkukNow, “This is the first time that the Kaka’is have reached the council.”
“I will strive to serve the people in general and the Kaka’is in particular. I have several ideas and strategic projects to implement in the Kaka’i villages including establishing hospitals and providing job and employment opportunities.”
The Kaka'is throughout Iraq and the Iraq Kurdistan Region IKR have a single quota seat in the Halabja Provincial Council, which is not known when it will be formed, but they had candidates among other lists and entities, and in the current session of the Iraqi parliament they have two seats for the Kirkuk and Nineveh governorates.
Over the past years, the KirkukNow has paid special attention to the issue of the Kaka’is and has continued to convey the voice of this component through press reports and follow-ups, including their demands related to granting them representation in legislative and executive institutions, as they are deprived of representation in most administrative and military authorities, even in their regions.
