Baghdad - Iraq's electoral commission on Monday delayed
releasing more results from last week's parliamentary vote, amid
mounting claims of fraud as the protracted count continued.
Iraq's March 7 parliamentary elections, the country's second since
the 2003 US-led invasion, are widely seen as a key test of the
country's stability ahead of US combat troops' withdrawal, and will
shape the country's politics for years to come.
The Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC)'s Judge Qassim
al-Aboudi had earlier on Monday said the commission would announce
results of the vote with 60 per cent of ballots counted, but in an
evening press conference alongside fellow electoral official Hamdiya
al-Husseini, the two simply announced that 66 per cent of votes had
been counted.
The chaotic and protracted process of announcing the early results
has compounded suspicions of manipulation in the count from some
quarters.
Al-Aboudi on Monday evening said the IHEC was investigating 205
claims of electoral fraud in the March 7 national vote, 31 claims
from a previous special vote for emergency responders, and 72 claims
from Iraqi expatriate voters.
Results from some polling centres had been canceled because the
number of ballots completed exceeded the number of registered voters
in the district, al-Aboudi said in remarks broadcast on Iraqi state
television.
Some of those polling centres, he told reporters, had been in the
disputed northern city of Kirkuk.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whose State of Law coalition is
leading in seven provinces - including Baghdad, which is by far the
largest electoral prize in the race - sought to minimise the fraud
allegations.
'Complaints presented to the commission are simple, and will not
change the election's results,' he said in a statement Monday.
Former prime minister Ayad Allawi's Iraqi List, the main
challenger to al-Maliki's bloc is leading in five provinces. He was
leading in Kirkuk, with 61-per-cent of the votes counted there by
Sunday night.
The Kurdistan Alliance, a union of the two parties that have for
decades defined Iraqi Kurdish Politics, was running second in the
city, the subject of a long dispute so potentially explosive that it
has been left out of previous rounds of voting since the 2003 US-led
invasion of the country.
Iraqi Kurdish politician Khalid Shenawi on Sunday evening accused
election workers, especially in predominantly Arab areas near the
city, of electoral fraud, saying they had manipulated the vote in
favour of Allawi's list.
The allegations set the stage for a possible battle over poll
results in the city, which were in any case made provisional, subject
to legal challenge, after Arab and Turkman politicians accused the
Kurds of stacking voter rolls in their favour.
Many Iraqi Kurds hope Kirkuk will become the capital of an
independent Kurdistan, but Arab and Turkman politicians view the
city, and its nearby 10 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, as
integral parts of Iraq.
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