There is still over a month to go before Iraqi Kurds go to the polls along with the rest of the country. A democratic feast in the making? Hardly - the results are already known.
That Kurdish groups have set up a coalition for January's elections was only to be expected. The Kurds are a minority with few friends inside the country, and see a united front as their only hope of getting what they want when the new constitution is drawn up.
But on December 1, Kurdish leaders went a stage further, announcing that the two main Kurdish parties, plus half a dozen smaller ones, would form a joint list for the Kurdistan regional parliament elections, due to take place on the same day.
According to the agreement, negotiated in secret, about 80 per cent of the coalition's seats will be divided equally between the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Smaller parties get the rest.
Both PUK leader Jalal Talabani and his KDP counterpart Massud Barzani described their decision as a response to public demand.
The patriotic rhetoric failed to convince Assos Herdi - editor of Iraqi Kurdistan's only independent newspaper, Hawlati. When Iraq's Kurds last went to the polls in 1992, he pointed out that KDP and PUK divided almost all the votes between them.
'What we are facing now is not a democratic election but a sort of single-party referendum,' he said.