IHEC removes elections results, says it will recount 6% of the votes

Iraq's High Electoral Commission (IHEC) has removed the preliminary results of the Iraqi parliamentary election from its official website while the IHEC is scheduled to begin a manual recount of the votes on Wednesday.

"The votes which will be recounted is only 6% of the total vote in all of Iraq," the IHEC said in a statement.

Hussein Biruli, a member of the IHEC's Diyala office, told PUKmedia that the preliminary results were removed due to changes in 8,574 boxes after the manual recount. 

While Nibras Abusuda, an assistant to the spokesman for the IHEC, told PUKmedia that the commission will be hand-separating the votes of 161 Karkh office stations, which have not been sent electronically with 337 Rusafa office stations, as the first stage.

"We call on representatives of political parties, candidates, UN observers, local observers, and media channels to be present today, October 13, 2021, to monitor the process of separation of the votes," he said.

Regarding the deletion of the results on the commission's website, the commission's assistant spokesman said, that "deleting the results was due to the renewal of the results, especially after a manual recount to the ballot boxes."

The head of the IHEC, Jalil Adnan Khalaf, noted that 3,100 polling stations will be set up at the National Centre for a manual recount.

He also said that the votes for separation are 6% of the total votes cast in all of Iraq which are 60,000 votes of all provinces.

On Sunday, the process of general voting for the early elections for the 2021 Iraqi Parliament took place all over Kurdistan Region and Iraq with a low turnout of only 41 %. Candidates were competing for 329 seats in the Iraqi Parliament Council, 83 seats are allocated to women, also nine seats for minorities.

The party of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was the largest vote-getter in Iraqi parliamentary elections, according to initial results released Monday.

A count based on partial results shows the Shiite Muslim cleric has won more than 70 seats in the 329-seat parliament.

Al-Sadr's party said it won 73 seats, increasing its seat count of 54 and giving it a large influence in government formation.

Meanwhile, losses were booked by pro-Iranian parties with links to the armed groups that make up the fighter network known as Hashd al-Shaabi, or Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF).

Iraq held the elections months ahead of its time. Early elections were one of the demands of the protesters who took to the Iraqi streets in October 2019 to vent their anger and frustration at the government's inability to fight corruption and provide them with security and stability.  



PUKmedia