Iraq poll results delayed again, amid mounting fraud claims (Roundup)

Mar 15, 2010, 18:04 GMT

Baghdad - Iraq's electoral commission on Monday delayed releasing more results from last week's parliamentary vote, amid mounting claims of fraud as the protracted count continued.

Iraq's March 7 parliamentary elections, the country's second since the 2003 US-led invasion, are widely seen as a key test of the country's stability ahead of US combat troops' withdrawal, and will shape the country's politics for years to come.

The Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC)'s Judge Qassim al-Aboudi had earlier on Monday said the commission would announce results of the vote with 60 per cent of ballots counted, but in an evening press conference alongside fellow electoral official Hamdiya al-Husseini, the two simply announced that 66 per cent of votes had been counted.

The chaotic and protracted process of announcing the early results has compounded suspicions of manipulation in the count from some quarters.

Al-Aboudi on Monday evening said the IHEC was investigating 205 claims of electoral fraud in the March 7 national vote, 31 claims from a previous special vote for emergency responders, and 72 claims from Iraqi expatriate voters.

Results from some polling centres had been canceled because the number of ballots completed exceeded the number of registered voters in the district, al-Aboudi said in remarks broadcast on Iraqi state television.

Some of those polling centres, he told reporters, had been in the disputed northern city of Kirkuk.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whose State of Law coalition is leading in seven provinces - including Baghdad, which is by far the largest electoral prize in the race - sought to minimise the fraud allegations.

'Complaints presented to the commission are simple, and will not change the election's results,' he said in a statement Monday.

Former prime minister Ayad Allawi's Iraqi List, the main challenger to al-Maliki's bloc is leading in five provinces. He was leading in Kirkuk, with 61-per-cent of the votes counted there by Sunday night.

The Kurdistan Alliance, a union of the two parties that have for decades defined Iraqi Kurdish Politics, was running second in the city, the subject of a long dispute so potentially explosive that it has been left out of previous rounds of voting since the 2003 US-led invasion of the country.

Iraqi Kurdish politician Khalid Shenawi on Sunday evening accused election workers, especially in predominantly Arab areas near the city, of electoral fraud, saying they had manipulated the vote in favour of Allawi's list.

The allegations set the stage for a possible battle over poll results in the city, which were in any case made provisional, subject to legal challenge, after Arab and Turkman politicians accused the Kurds of stacking voter rolls in their favour.

Many Iraqi Kurds hope Kirkuk will become the capital of an independent Kurdistan, but Arab and Turkman politicians view the city, and its nearby 10 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, as integral parts of Iraq.