Iraq’s Abadi congratulates Shiite cleric Sadr on election win
Baghdad (Iraqinews.com) ‐ Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has phoned prominent Shiite holy man Moqtada
Tateral-Sadr
... the Iranian catspaw holy man who was 22 years old in 2003 and was nearing 40 in 2010. He spends most of his time in Iran, safely out of the line of fire, where he's learning to be an ayatollah...
to congratulate him on winning the parliamentary elections.
The Iraqi premier congratulated Sadr after his bloc came in the first position place among the electoral lists, Sputnik quoted Sadr’s office as saying in a statement on Tuesday.
In the phone call, Abadi praised the holding of the electoral process in a secure and democratic atmosphere.
According to preliminary results announced by the Iraqi Independent High Electoral Commission, Sadr’s Sairoon bloc took the lead after votes were counted in 16 out of Iraq’s 18 provinces.
Saturday’s elections were the first in Iraq since the defeat of Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
last year by Iraqi forces and a U.S.-led coalition.
The elections will decide the 329 members of the Council of Representatives who will in turn elect the Iraqi president and prime minister.
Even with more than 10 million Iraqis voting, the election saw a record low turnout, with 44 percent of eligible voters casting ballots.
The elections were originally scheduled for September 2017, but were delayed due to the country’s fight against Islamic State, which ended in December 2017 with the recapture of their remaining territories.
Iraqi commission announces Kirkuk vote results, Kurdish PUK comes firstBaghdad (IraqiNews.com) Iraq’s electoral commission has announced preliminary results of votes for parliamentary elections in Kirkuk,
... a thick stew of Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds, and probably Antarcticans, all of them mutually hostile most of the time...
ending disputes over earlier results that prompted calls for manual recounts.
The electoral commission said the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan came first in the mixed Arab, Kurdish and Turkmen province. Second came the Arab Alliance, and the Turkmen Front came third.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said earlier today that the only solution for the dispute over anticipated results in Kirkuk was to conduct a recount.
Iraqi parliament elections, the first after victory over Islamic State holy warriors in December, were held on Saturday. On election day, Kirkuk’s governor, Rakan al-Jubouri, said the adopted electronic counting system produced controversial results, urging a manual recount to avert sectarian or ethnic clash.
Sulaimaniya, another Iraqi province falling inside Kurdistan Region, had seen festivities on election day driven by objections by Arab and Turkmen groups to results showing PUK won most votes.
The commission declared vote results for the rest of provinces on Monday, saying Shia holy man Moqtada
Tateral-Sadr’s Saeroon list coming first, al-Fatah list coming second and PM Abadi’s al-Nasr coming third.