Iraq to start manual recount of votes under international supervision
Iraq will this week begin a manual recount of the votes from the May parliamentary election which was clouded by allegations of fraud.
The recount, on Tuesday, is a crucial step towards the formation of the new parliament and government.
Only suspect ballots flagged in formal complaints or official reports on fraud will be recounted, a spokesman for the panel of judges conducting the process said yesterday.
“The manual recount will be conducted in the presence of representatives from the United Nations, foreign embassies and political parties; as well as local and international observers, members of the media, and the ministries of defence and the interior,” Judge Laith Jabr Hamza said.
In seven provinces where numerous complaints of fraud were made – Kirkuk, Sulaimaniya, Erbil, Dohuk, Nineveh, Salahuddin and Anbar – the recount will be conducted by the local electoral offices, Mr Hamza said.
Those ballot boxes already transferred to Baghdad will be recounted in the capital.
The recount has been a politically fraught issue, with the leaders of winning blocs embroiled in negotiations for weeks over the formation of the next government.
Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi, whose electoral list came third in the poll, and the winner, cleric Moqtada Al Sadr, entered into an alliance last week, less than two weeks after Mr Al Sadr announced a similar alliance with second-placed Iran ally Hadi Al Amiri’s bloc, thus bringing the top three blocs together.
The recount will exclude Baghdad, where a storage site holding half of the city’s ballot boxes went up in flames last month in an incident Mr Al Abadi described as a “plot to harm the nation and its democracy”.
Overseas votes in Iran, Turkey, Britain, Lebanon, Jordan, the United States and Germany will also be recounted, Mr Hamza said.
Last month, the outgoing parliament passed a law mandating a nationwide manual recount of all votes, but the judges now in charge of the process said it would be conducted only for problematic ballots.