ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani on Wednesday slammed Iraq’s electoral system as “unjust” and argued that the regulations produce unequal seat distributions, demanding amendment to the law.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the sixth Middle East Peace and Security Conference (MEPS) in Duhok, the premier stated that Iraq’s new electoral regulations had “no fairness.”

Barzani argued that despite scoring more than 1,100,000 votes in the parliamentary elections, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) only attained 26 seats, while “other parties” with half of KDP’s votes got the same number of seats and others with 750,000 votes got “29 seats.”

“There was no fairness in the seat distribution,” he said, dubbing the matter “a legal problem.” Barzani added that “work must be done to rectify this injustice.”

Despite receiving the second highest number of votes in the country with over one million, second only to Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani’s Reconstruction and Development Alliance, the KDP received the fifth highest number of seats at 26, snatching a majority of seats across Erbil, Duhok and, in an unprecedented breakthrough, Nineveh.

A new electoral system influenced the discrepancy between overall votes and resultant seats, dividing the Kurdistan Region into four electoral districts instead of one, compounded by the reduction of the Region’s seats from 111 to 100.

KDP officials continuously criticized the new regulations claiming they disfavor the Kurdistan Region and its political components, despite the high turnout rate the Region has witnessed coupled with KDP’s major breakthrough with the unprecedented million votes.

Iraq concluded its sixth parliamentary elections on Tuesday evening at 6:00 pm, in which nearly 7,750 candidates competed for the Iraqi legislature’s 329 seats.