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A week after Iraqi elections, vote count
far from complete
15.3.2010 |
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March
15, 2010
BAGHDAD,— Partial election results released
Sunday for all of Iraq's 18 provinces showed Prime
Minister Nouri al Maliki's coalition
ahead
of formidable rivals, both secular and religious, in
a tight race that's complicated by a glacial
vote-counting process and allegations of fraud.
Maliki's opponents and independent political
observers, however, cautioned against calling the
election just yet because the tallies so far are
incomplete and, in some provinces, based on just 10
percent of votes counted.
None of the 18 provinces had all votes counted by
late Sunday, a week after the election, according to
the commission's figures. The electoral commission
has come under intense criticism for releasing
results in dribs and drabs, in most provinces before
the commission's own 30 percent threshold of votes
counted was reached.
Maliki's State of Law bloc is leading in seven
provinces, including the key battleground of Baghdad
, where the most seats were up for grabs in the
March 7 parliamentary election. Maliki,www.ekurd.neta
Shiite Muslim conservative who rebranded himself as
a nationalist candidate, is widely credited for
security gains that the U.S. military hopes will
hold until the full withdrawal of American forces by
the end of next year.
The secular, mixed-sect coalition anchored by former
premier Ayad Allawi leads in five provinces, while
the main Kurdish ticket and an Iranian-backed
alliance of Shiite religious parties are leading in
three provinces apiece, according to the partial
figures released by Iraq's Independent High
Electoral Commission , the body overseeing the
election.
"They're partial results and, anyway, these results
don't match ours. We've demanded for the commission
to announce the results from the polling stations on
its Web site," said Maysoun al Damlouji , a
candidate on and a spokeswoman for Allawi's Iraqiya
slate. "If we see that the figures match, there will
be reassurance that the elections haven't been
manipulated."
Who's ahead could shift in some southern provinces,
where Maliki's bloc is battling the Shiite religous
Iraqi National Alliance for the Shiite heartland,
and in some northern provinces, where Allawi's
coalition and the Kurds are squaring off in races
colored by tensions between Sunni Arabs and Kurdish
factions.
Election commission officials have offered a number
of reasons for the delayed counting: an overwhelmed
computer server, slow employees and fraud
allegations, to name a few.
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
McClatchy Newspapers | mcclatchydc com
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