By Ali Jawad
BAGHDAD (AA) – Iraq’s parliament on Monday called for the dismissal of 13 leading members of the country’s official electoral commission ahead of a planned manual recount of May 12 parliamentary polls results.
The move by parliament comes one day after the electoral commission announced its decision to conduct a partial recount of ballots cast.
On Sunday, a panel of judges tasked earlier with assuming the electoral commission’s responsibilities decided to conduct a manual recount — but only at polling stations where rigging claims had been reported, in line with an earlier ruling by Iraq’s Supreme Federal Court.
“Thirteen electoral commission officials… have been accused of rigging election results,” Adel al-Nuri, the head of a parliamentary fact-finding committee, told Anadolu Agency on Monday.
These officials, he added, “must be removed before a manual recount can be conducted”.
Results of Iraq’s hotly-contested May 12 parliamentary election have remained dogged by controversy and allegations of vote-rigging — claims dismissed by the main political coalitions that dominated the polls.
On June 6, parliament voted in favor of amending Iraq’s electoral law, allowing votes to be recounted manually.
Shortly afterward, a panel of judges was appointed to assume the responsibilities of the electoral commission, several members of which were sacked.
Muqtada al-Sadr, a politician and prominent Shia cleric whose Sairoon coalition came in first in the poll, has said parliament lacks the authority to overturn official election results.
According to those results, al-Sadr's Sairoon coalition won 54 parliamentary seats, followed by a Hashd al-Shaabi-led coalition (47 seats) and Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's Victory Bloc (42 seats).
