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Allawi's Coalition calls for annulling results of Iraq parliamentary elections

May 17, 2018 at 3:29 am

The Iraqi flag [Yunus Keleş/Anadolu Agency]

Al-Wataniya Coalition, led by Iraq Vice President Ayad Allawi, called for annulling the parliamentary elections’ results and the selection of a new commission to organize new elections in the country, Wednesday.

At a press conference held in Baghdad, Hamed Al-Mutlaq, leader in the coalition said: “We call for annulling the elections’ results in all Iraq and that a new commission capable of running fair elections should be formed, after the elections’ fraud cases harmed Iraqi people.”

He added that “we have evidence oof fraud and irregularities which accompanied the vote, where persons who are not authorized to participate in the elections voted in Al-Qa’im, Ar-Rutbah.”

Read: The ever-shifting landscape of Iraq’s electoral results

Al-Mutlaq presented lists of names he said were “of deceased people who were used by political parties in voting.” He also presented during the conference voter cards that “employees of the Electoral Commission sold,” without providing further details.

Preliminary estimates revealed that Al-Wataniya coalition won 22 seats in the elections out of 328, according to sources in the Electoral Commission, which made earlier statements to Anadolu. Coalition leader, Abdul Karim Abtan, said during the same press conference that “the participation rate in the general elections in Iraq did not exceed 20 per cent, and we have no idea how the Electoral Commission raised the percentage to 44.52 per cent.”

Abtan clarified that “candidates’ votes in a number of provinces, including Kirkuk, were stolen.”

Read: Democracy has taken a leap forward in Iraq

“We call for a quick random check of the votes of electors in a number of provinces through manual counting, and in case there were differences from what had been announced, we call for annulling the elections’ results.”

At the level of the 18 provinces, the initial official results showed the victory of Sairoun Alliance, supported by the Shiite cleric, Muqtada Al-Sadr, which ranked first, followed by the Fatah Alliance, led by Hadi Al-Amiri, and Al-Nasr Coalition, led by Al-Abadi, which ranked third.

The announcement of the results raised accusations of fraud launched by several political parties, most notably the Arab and Turkmen forces in Kirkuk, Al- Wataniya Coalition, led by Ayad Allawi, and Kurdish parties in the northern region of the country.