BAGHDAD, Nov. 9, 2009 (Xinhua) --

The Independent High Electoral Commission of Iraq decided on Monday to extend by five days the deadline of holding the national parliamentary elections, previously scheduled for Jan. 16.

    "We have sent a message to the presidential council, telling them we need several more days after the previously scheduled date," commission member Qasim al-Aboudi said in a press release.

    Al-Aboudi said "after negotiating with the presidential council, we agreed that Jan. 21 will be the date for holding the national parliamentary elections."

    He stressed that "the new date will not be changed."

    On Sunday night, the Iraqi lawmakers approved by majority a long-awaited new election law which would govern the upcoming national voting.

    The law won 141 votes out of 195 lawmakers who attended the televised session of the 275-seat parliament.

    The law approved the open list system, under which voters can pick individual candidates, instead of the closed list system adopted in the 2005 elections, under which they can only pick parties, not candidates.

    The law also stipulated that each of the country's 18 provinces will be considered as a single electorate.

    The Iraqi lawmakers have long been struggling over a compromise on how voting should take place in the northern oil-rich Kirkuk, an ethnically-mixed province of Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen.

    Kurdish lawmakers wanted to see Kirkuk to vote according to the2009 registry of voters like the rest of the country, but the Arabs and Turkmen were looking with suspicion at the rise of Kurds in the province and therefore they preferred the 2004 or 2005 voters' registration.

    The new electoral law solved the impasse by suggesting using the 2009 voters' registry in Kirkuk and any other provincial registry, which should be subject to examination by a committee within a year on whether there is a suspicion about the numbers of voters. 

Editor: Mu Xuequan