Iraq: Al-Fatah Alliance Surprised by Security Council Welcoming Election Results
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Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission decides to manually recount 234 polling stations.
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Iraq's IHEC rejects 322 appeals for various reasons
The Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) of Iraq announced on Saturday that it is still reviewing submitted appeals. 340 appeals were presented to the board of commissioners, and after completing the necessary investigative procedure in light of presented evidence and recommendations, the board recommended that 322 appeals be rejected for various reasons.
The board also added in its statement that it has decided to manually recount the results of 234 of the polling stations whose results were appealed, based on 18 appeals distributed across the governorates of Salah ad Din, Basra, and Baghdad. The board will provide the necessary recommendations once the recount is over.
UN Security Council
The United Nations Security Council welcomed "interim reports that the elections proceeded smoothly and featured significant technical and procedural improvements from previous Iraqi elections."
The Security Council also commended Iraq's IHEC for the "technically sound elections," and also "the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) for providing IHEC the technical assistance and international monitoring team the Government of Iraq requested to strengthen the electoral process and promote transparency."
Muqtada al-Sadr
Sadrist movement leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, commented on the UN Security Council's statement, saying that its support for the elections' results and its vouching for its integrity, going as far as to say that it is technically superior to its predecessors, reflects a beautiful image of Iraqi democracy on the one hand, and gives one hope that the parties claiming that a forgery took place in that democratic process will eventually yield, on the other.
He went on to say that dragging the country into chaos and disturbing civil peace due to their dubiousness of the electoral results is a shameful thing that further increases the complexity of the political and security scene, and paints them in a negative light.
— مقتدى السيد Ù…Øمد الصدر (@Mu_AlSadr) October 23, 2021
Al-Fatah Alliance
The Al-Fatah alliance released a statement, announcing it found the Security Council statement, which commended the success of the elections before the legal appeals were processed, to be surprising, as many appeals were submitted by the majority of political factions and candidates.
The alliance considered that this commendation shows the bias of the Security Council, and raises questions regarding its role in what took place, especially since local and international monitors, namely the EU's, had recorded many violations on election day and in the announcement of the results.
The alliance reiterated that asking for a recount of all polling stations is a right they will never let go of, announcing their refusal of any foreign interference in the elections.
