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| Iraq | |
| Iraq initial results show PM taking slender lead | |
| 2010-03-13 | |
| [Al Arabiya Latest] A senior member of Iraq's main secular opposition bloc on Friday protested of blatant fraud in favor 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 favor 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. The accusations came a day after the European Delegation for Relations with Iraq reported that "blatant attempts are underway to defraud the Iraqi people of their true democratic choice in last weekend's elections." "I understand that very high officials from the Iraqi Electoral Commission have been caught cheating by entering false data on the election computer," President of the delegation Struan Stevenson told the European Parliament. "It appears that massive efforts are going into attempts to deny victory to Mr 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 added. But Iyad al-Kinaani, an official in Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC), told AFP 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." | |
| Posted by:Fred |