China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Iraqi PM cites ‘plot’
Ballot boxes burned after election recount ordered
BAGHDAD — A storage site housing half of Baghdad’s ballot boxes from Iraq’s parliamentary election in May caught fire on Sunday, just days after parliament demanded a nationwide recount of votes, drawing calls for the election to be re-run.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi described the blaze as a “plot” aimed at Iraq’s democracy.
“Burning election warehouses ... is a plot to harm the nation and its democracy. We will take all necessary measures and strike with an iron fist all who undermine the security of the nation and its citizens,” he said in a statement.
An Interior Ministry source said the incident took place in the afternoon in the electoral commission’s warehouses in the Gailani neighborhood, which held ballot boxes and electronic counting devices.
Heavy black smoke rose above the site as the fire extended to three out of six warehouses containing the ballot boxes, while fire engines were extinguishing the fire and civil defense policemen were trying to save some of the ballot boxes.
“The warehouses storing all the ballot boxes from the Risafa area are on fire, and all the boxes have burned,” said Mohammed al-Rubei, a member of Baghdad’s provincial council.
A few hours later, the fire was under control, as the security forces sealed off the scene and prevented media from entering the storage facilities, the Interior Ministry source said.
Another security force collected the unburned ballot boxes and evacuated them to safe places under tight security measures, the source said.
The warehouses are owned by the Iraqi Trade Ministry, and rented by the electoral commission to store thousands of ballot boxes, the source added.
The burned ballot boxes are part of a manual recount of votes, after the Iraqi parliament on June 6 approved recount of votes in all polling stations across Iraq over allegations of fraud and irregularities in the May 12 parliamentary election.
The parliament voted in favor of suspending the nine top officials of the Independent High Electoral Commission, or IHEC, and replacing them with nine judges in order to supervise the performance of the electoral commission during the recount process.
Earlier on Sunday, the Supreme Judicial Council named nine judges to take over the country’s electoral commission instead of the board of commissioners of IHEC, according to AbdulSattar al-Biraqdar, spokesperson of the Iraqi Supreme Judicial Council.
Many Iraqi parties, especially in the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan and the disputed areas, including Kirkuk Province, have complained about alleged irregularities and forgery in the parliamentary election.
The complaints put IHEC under pressure, as the electoral commission has not carried out manual recount of many ballot boxes and depended only on the electronic count of the votes.
On May 12, millions of Iraqis went to 8,959 polling centers across the country to vote for their parliamentary representatives in the first general election after Iraq’s historic victory over the Islamic State group last December.