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Officials claim only
minimal fraud occurred during the referendum, but 99
per cent approval rates have raised eyebrows.
Electoral officials in Erbil and Sulaimaniyah have
denied allegations of widespread fraud during the
recent constitutional referendum, contradicting
claims by observers and poll workers that there were
grave procedural violations in the Kurdish region.
The Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, IECI,
said that 99 per cent of voters in the three Kurdish
provinces – Dahuk, Erbil and Sulaimaniyah – voted in
favour of the constitution, which was officially
approved this week. Seventy-nine per cent of voters
across Iraq accepted the charter.
In the majority Kurdish regions in northern Iraq,
party officials who drafted the constitution cheered
the results while many residents rolled their eyes
as the figures were released. The commission will
outline any voting irregularities on October 27.
Karwan Mehdi, an election monitor in Erbil, has
already made up his mind, “The [final] figures were
fabricated. Of course turnout was smaller than they
declared and there were fewer yes votes than they
announced.” Mehdi’s concerns echoed those of several
monitors, electoral staff members and citizens
interviewed by IWPR who witnessed – and in some
cases practiced - fraud first-hand.
Ako Khalil managed a polling station in Sulaimaniyah.
He said that election observers representing the
Kurdistan Democratic Party, the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Socialist Democratic
Party “told us that because the turnout was low and
the situation was critical for Kurds, we should put
some more yes votes into the ballot boxes. I didn’t
let them do that at my polling station. But it was
obvious that they did so at others”.
Elsewhere, an electoral commission member in
Sulaimaniyah who asked to remain anonymous said he
and others at the voting centre stuffed ballot boxes
when too few people showed up, “We filled in voting
forms and stuffed them in the ballot boxes. We had
nothing to do and we were tired.”
Kocher Ali, a monitor with the Rozh network, was
turned away when he tried to monitor the referendum
at a preparatory school in Sulaimaniyah. He was told
only that only political party observers were
allowed in. The school was located directly across
from Sulaimaniyah’s electoral commission office.
Also in Sulaimaniyah, a 27-year-old man who did not
want to be identified, said he voted on behalf of
his four brothers who live outside Iraq by taking
their identification cards to polling stations. “I
knew the staff at the polling stations, so they
allowed me to vote for them,” he said.
Karwan Mahdi Osman, leader of a monitoring team in
Erbil, said security personnel dressed in civilian
clothing arrived at a preparatory school in the
Mantkawa neighbourhood with ink-stained fingers -
indicating they had already cast their ballots - and
voted again.
At a girls’ school used as a polling station in
Erbil, an official told IWPR that voters who were
not registered to vote there had been allowed to
cast their ballots. She admitted she had "made a
personal decision to turn a blind eye to some people
[who voted without being registered] like the
elderly and sick”.
These stories, however, were in sharp contrast to
accounts by most election officials.
Kamal Ghambar, director of IECI’s Erbil office,
rejected claims that serious fraud occurred in the
province or that turnout was low.
He said most of the irregularities involved errors
on the voter registration lists sent from Baghdad,
which delayed voting at the polls early on
referendum day.
Hama-Salih Hama-Amin, the IECI director in
Sulaimaniyah, said most of the problems in his
province were of a similar nature.
“I was contacted only twice from voting centres
where party representative wanted to illegally stuff
ballot boxes with yes votes,” said Hama-Amin. “We
solved it quickly and did not allow it to happen.”
Voting centres were not packed for the referendum as
they had been during the January parliamentary
election, indicating that voter apathy was as high
as turnout.
Erbil and Sulaimaniyah residents were particularly
sceptical of the IECI’s turnout figures of 85 per
cent in Dahuk, 90 per cent in Erbil and 75 per cent
in Sulaimaniyah.
International monitors also raised concerns, and
insisted that a recount should be held, overseen by
the United Nations. According to Ghambar, the
recount team spent two days in Erbil and found no
significant cases of fraud.
However, Karwan Mehdi notes that the monitors
recounted only a sample of the vote, and not all the
ballots, leaving them with an incomplete picture.
Hazhar Jameel, a monitor with Kurdistan Children’s
Nest, a non-government group in Sulaimaniyah, said
his monitors did not report significant violations
in the province. He said voter approval of the
constitution was high, but he agreed turnout was
low.
Ata Muhammed, a monitor in Sulaimaniyah with the
Civil Development Organisation, which had 730
monitors in Sulaimaniyah, Kirkuk, Diyala and
Salahaddin, agreed that most people had supported
the constitution.
"Most of the voters voted yes. Few of those who
wanted to vote no actually went to the polls," he
said.
Rebaz Mahmood is an IWPR trainee journalist in
Sulaimaniyah. IWPR trainee journalist Talar Nadir in
Sulaimaniyah also contributed to this report.
www.iwpr.net
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