No change in Iraqi election results after Baghdad recount (Roundup)

May 16, 2010, 15:48 GMT

Baghdad - There was was no change in the results of Iraq's parliamentary elections after a recount of votes cast in Baghdad, the country's electoral commission said Sunday.

'Around 86 per cent of votes were for individual candidates, not for the lists, which makes fraud very difficult,' Qasim al-Aboudi, spokesman of the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) told reporters.

Despite some changes to votes of the winning candidates, the number of the seats won by each coalition bloc remained the same, after the recount of some 2.5 million votes, he said.

Political parties have three days to appeal these results, al- Aboudi added.

A Baghdad court ordered a manual recount of the ballots cast in the capital after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's State of Law coalition alleged the results were fraudulent.

The results of the March 7 parliamentary elections showed the Iraqiya List of former prime minister Iyad Allawi winning 91 seats in the 325-member parliament, followed by al-Maliki's coalition, with 89 seats.

In Baghdad, the State of Law won 26 seats, followed by the Iraqiya with 24 and the National Iraqi alliance with 17 seats.

Intense political jockeying has followed the results, as both al- Maliki and Allawi claimed the right to form the new government.

Allawi insists he has the right to form a new government because he won the highest number of seats. Yet a recent alliance between al- Maliki's State of Law and the Iraqi National lists, became the largest faction in parliament with 159 deputies.

But that number is still four seats short of a working majority.

Allawi's victory is also threatened by a court order to invalidate votes cast for 52 candidates, on the ground that they were formerly linked to the Baath Party of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

The court has yet to rule on whether nine winning candidates should be disqualified.

'The fate of the nine winning candidates is still unknown. They remain winners until a decision is taken by the commission,' al- Aboudi said.