[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Mail] [Sign-in] [Setup] [Help] [Register]
|
Status: Not Logged In; Sign In
International News Title: Iraq Contender Raises Suspicion of Tampering Amid First Results March 11 (Bloomberg) -- As the first results from Iraq’s election showed blocs led by former premier Ayad Allawi and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki leading in their areas of core support, Allawi complained about possible vote-tampering. The State of Law, a Shiite Muslim-dominated alliance headed by al-Maliki, was ahead in two Shiite provinces in southern Iraq, Najaf and Babil, according to Amal Bairaqdar, a member of the Independent High Electoral Commission. The panel said Allawi’s Iraqiya bloc was leading in largely Sunni Muslim Diyala and Salahdin, and the Kurdistan Alliance in the Kurdish province of Erbil. More results may be out tomorrow, Bairaqdar said. Even before the results from five of Iraq’s 18 provinces were released, the coalition headed by Allawi, a Shiite and U.S. ally, expressed suspicions about the count. The tally has yet to include Baghdad, the biggest city. The main blocs have said no one is expected to win a majority, opening the way to potentially months-long talks to form a new government. “There has been increasing concern in political circles about attempts to manipulate the election results,” Iraqiya said in an e-mailed statement. “Unjustified delays in announcing the results, heated political pressures and blatant interventions” were leading to a “loss of credibility,” the bloc said. Iraqiya will be in a tight race with al-Maliki’s coalition for top vote-getter in the March 7 parliamentary election, according to Iraqi media reports. Other parties representing Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, are also getting shares of the vote. The country pumped about 2.4 million barrels a day last month, according to Bloomberg estimates. Iraq’s 115 billion- barrel oil reserves place it third in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Iran. Shiite Domination Allawi campaigned on a non-sectarian platform and attracted Sunnis who have been put off by the Shiite domination of the present government. Al-Maliki also presented himself as a nationalist leader. Electoral commission chief Faraj al-Haydari had said that the final results of the parliamentary vote, Iraq’s second since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, would take four to five days to announce, the Aswat al-Iraq news agency reported. Officials have promised the release of results every day since the vote, in which 62 percent of Iraq’s 19 million eligible voters took part. Said Arikat, a spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, said the delays were caused only by the large number of ballots and the slow pace of manual counting. As for complaints of possible fraud, he said, “Politicians can say what they want. We have no reports of problems.” Ahmed Chalabi, a candidate of the Shiite-based Iraqi National Alliance, visited the electoral commission offices today to lodge complaints. He told reporters there that parties should hear the results before they are announced publicly, a request that would lead to further delays. Candidates Expelled Chalabi headed a government agency that expelled 30 of Allawi’s candidates from the balloting due to accusations of ties to the Baath Party of deposed leader Saddam Hussein. The possibility that parties might allege fraud raises the prospect of violence. The ruling coalition that emerges from the election must resolve disputes over sharing oil revenue among regions and whether to include the oil-rich city of Kirkuk in the Kurdish autonomous region in the north, as well as cope with hostilities between Shiites and Sunnis. Parties will probably spend months haggling over the makeup of a coalition government, said Wael Abdel Latif of the National Iraqi Alliance. “The formation of the government may face big problems if the results are close and there is no clear winner,” he said this week in an interview in Baghdad. Violence may escalate if the majority Shiites and the minority Sunnis and Kurds aren’t all included in a coalition, said Ahmed Ali, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. That would thwart U.S. ambitions to leave a stable Iraq as it withdraws its troops. U.S. troop strength is due to shrink from 96,000 to 50,000 by Sept. 1, and the remaining forces will leave Iraq by the end of 2011, under a schedule set last year by President Barack Obama.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread |
|
[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Mail] [Sign-in] [Setup] [Help] [Register]
|