The results in the Kurdistan Federal Region elections will only be announced next week, officials said.

Opposition election monitors claimed on Tuesday that supporters of one of Kurdistan’s two ruling parties interfered in the vote counting in Sulaymaniyah.

Patriotic Union leaders Barham Salih and Kosrat Rasoul have urged their supporters to accept the party’s election defeat.

The Electoral Commission has however agreed to provide Kurdistan’s parties with copies of the completed vote counting forms. Party officials are checking the forms and comparing the results with their own data. Officials want a recount of the vote if there are discrepancies.

It appears that only the voting results will be sent to Baghdad, rather than all of the ballot boxes. And this prompted some to say that vote counting should not be disrupted.

According to exit polls  President Massoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) has won the election, while its actual government partner - the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) - is in third place. Gorrani, Change Movement, is second. A result which, if confirmed, would shake the so far untouched coalition KDP-PUK.