People’s Unity electoral list demands
a recount of votes
Election results continue to impact the overall Iraqi political scene, especially after the announcement of [preliminary] election results, despite calls for a postponement and for a manual recount of the votes, wholly or partially, due to the existence of large-scale fraud and manipulation.
The Secretary of the Central Committee of the Iraqi Communist Party, Hamid Majeed Mousa, stressed that the election results announced by the Higher Electoral Commission last Friday evening (26th March) are preliminary results, and the candidates still have an opportunity to present their objections.
This comes at a time when the deadline for the submission of appeals is Monday 29th March, according to the Electoral Commission.
In a statement to “Iraq Beituna Agency”, Mousa said that People’s Unity (“Ittihad Al-Shaab”) list has a lot of objections regarding the fairness and integrity of these elections,” asserting “our determination to present our point of view and objections of the list to the Electoral Commission and the Constitutional Court, and calling for a recount in many provinces.”
Mousa pointed out that “the parliamentary elections were marred by a lot of manipulation and lack of integrity in all its stages, which has been reflected negatively on the share of votes of many lists.”
For his part, Mufid al-Jazairy, member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party, said: “The electoral process has witnessed many forms of manipulation and fraud,” and “totally lacked transparency”. He added that the election results “would have certainly changed if an end was put to this fraud.”
Al-Jazairy explained to “Voices of Iraq” news agency that “in every stage of the electoral process, especially in the stages of vote sorting and counting, and in entering data in computers, there were many types of manipulation”.
Raid Fahmi, member of the Political Bureau of the Party, held the Electoral Commission and the Electoral Law responsible for the negative repercussions that have occurred in the elections and the resulting injustice and violations of the rights of voters.
Fahmi told the Iraqi National News Agency that “the election law was totally unfair and we raised objections to it from the beginning. Under this law, votes belonging to our list were given to others.”
He added: “The Electoral Commission has contributed to the loss of our votes because of its incompetence, in addition to violations and fraud that took place on the polling day and afterwards. There was room for manipulation of the election results.”
Report published on Iraqi CP’s website on 27th March 2010
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