...

Iraqi official "surprised" by fraud allegations from Brussels

Arab World Materials 12 March 2010 14:00 (UTC +04:00)
An Iraqi elections official on Friday said he was "surprised" by allegations of electoral fraud from the European parliament's chief liaison with Iraq.
Iraqi official "surprised" by fraud allegations from Brussels

An Iraqi elections official on Friday said he was "surprised" by allegations of electoral fraud from the European parliament's chief liaison with Iraq, DPA reported.

British conservative MEP Struan Stevenson had said officials from Iraqi's Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) had been "caught cheating by entering false data on the election computer" after the March 7 parliamentary elections.

The elections campaign had "included murder, intimidation, blackmail and fraud," and had "all the hallmarks of being inspired, financed, and managed by Tehran," Stevenson, who leads the European Parliament's delegation for relations with Iraq, charged in a statement released Thursday.

"It appears that massive efforts are going into attempts to deny victory to Mr (Ayad) Allawi and his secularist, nationalist Al-Iraqiya list, who clearly must have secured an outright victory in the polls when such blatant attempts at fraud are taking place," Stevenson alleged.

Judge Qassim al-Aboudi, a spokesman for the IHEC, on Friday told the German Press Agency dpa that he was "surprised by these statements."

"Monitors from many countries, the European Union and from the political entities competing (in the polls) were present for all operations" in the elections and the tallying of votes, he said.

The IHEC on Thursday evening released early results from the March 7 vote in five of Iraq's 18 provinces. The results showed al-Maliki's State of Law coalition leading in Najaf and Babil provinces, and former prime minister Ayad Allawi's Iraqi List leading in the northern provinces of Salah al-Din and Diyala.

The Kurdish Alliance, a union of the two parties that have for decades defined Kurdish political life, had a commanding majority in Arbil, the capital of northern Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region, the IHEC said.

"The process of releasing early results will continue today and tomorrow, and will continue until the release of the final results," likely by the end of the month, al-Aboudi told dpa.

Al-Aboudi further called on Iraqi political parties to "be patient, and not to release any statistics on the results of the elections, because the electoral commission is responsible for announcing the results when the counting, sorting, and data entry is completed."

The Shiite-led Iraqi National Alliance and the Iraqi List on Thursday both released statements claiming they had placed second in the overall national vote.

Osama al-Nujaifi, an Arab nationalist politician from the northern city of Mosul who campaigned for the Iraqi List, on Thursday told dpa he expected "some manipulation," of the vote tally, but warned that if early returns showed "more manipulation than expected," it would provoke "a very strong response."

Latest

Latest