Baghdad, March 12: A senior member of Iraq’s main secular opposition bloc on Friday protested of blatant fraud in favour of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki during Iraq’s general election last weekend.
The national election commission, meanwhile, said the claims of fraud were either politically motivated or fuelled by lack of understanding of the counting procedures.
But it would nevertheless investigate any complaints it received.
“There has been clear and flagrant fraud,” said Intisar Allawi, a senior candidate in ex-prime minister Iyad Allawi’s Iraqiya bloc, the main rival to Maliki’s State of Law Alliance.
“There were persons who manipulated or changed the figures to increase the vote in favour of the State of Law Alliance.”
She said that Iraqiya’s own election observers for last Sunday’s poll had found ballot papers in garbage dumps in the northern disputed province of Kirkuk.
But Iyad al-Kinaani, an official in Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC), said such claims were fuelled by political motivations or a lack of understanding of the count.
“When we receive any accusations and there are problems, we block the ballot box and start an investigation,” Kinaani said.
“We are used to receiving these accusations from political blocs because either they do not know our procedures or they have not had good results in the election.
“That is why they are talking about fraud.”
On Thursday, Hamdiyah al-Husseini, another election commission official, said IHEC had received around 1,000 complaints over the vote, but did not provide further details.
Iraq PM locked in tight poll contest with Allawi
Maliki was locked in a tight contest with rival Allawi to keep his job, as results from Iraq’s elections were set to flow in on Friday.
Five days after the election, Maliki and Allawi, both Shiite, have emerged nationally as the main candidates for the post of prime minister, with initial results from four of Iraq’s 18 provinces putting their two blocs in the lead.
Preliminary figures released on Thursday for Najaf, Babil, Diyala and Salaheddin put Maliki’s State of Law Alliance ahead in the first two provinces, while ex-premier Allawi’s Iraqiya bloc was in front in the latter pair.
Early results from other provinces, including the Sunni province of Anbar in Iraq’s west, were expected on Friday.
In Najaf and Babil, two predominantly Shiite provinces in south Iraq, State of Law held leads of 7,000 votes and 14,000 votes respectively, with the Iraqi National Alliance (INA), a coalition led by Shiite religious groups, in second place after 30 percent of votes had been counted.
Allawi’s secular Iraqiya group was in third place.
Kinaani added that Allawi was in the lead in Diyala and Salaheddin, two majority Sunni provinces north of Baghdad, with 17 percent of votes counted in each province.
Complete results are expected to be announced on March 18 and the final ones — after any appeals are dealt with — will come at the end of the month.
Analysts have predicted protracted coalition building, as no single grouping is expected to win the 163 seats necessary to form a government on its own.
Several blocs called on Thursday for individual polling station tally sheets to be published online, expressing concerns the nationwide vote would not be in line with the total from individual stations.
Were the polling station tally sheets posted online, political blocs could check to see if their sum corresponded with the nationwide results tabulated by the election commission.
Kurdish KDP-PUK alliance leads in Arbil province
The Kurdistania alliance, made up of the Kurdish autonomous region’s two long-dominant parties, was in the lead in the Iraqi province of Arbil, an election official said on Thursday.
“Kurdistania is in the lead in Arbil, followed by Goran, and then the Etihad Islamic Union,” said Kinaani.
Kurdistania is made up of regional president Massud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.
—-Agencies