Iraqi Elections' Manual Vote Counting Complete

• 

Following the Sunday elections, the Independent High Electoral Commission continued counting votes, whose preliminary results showed that the Sadrist movement was in the lead. That led to an uproar in Iraq, especially by the Fatah coalition. The coalition cited 'fabricated' results, leading to a manual recount.

As the manual counting goes on, the Prime Minister's adviser, Abdul Hussein al-Hindawi, told the Iraqi News Agency, "The commission has completed the manual counting at all electoral stations," adding that the results of the manual counting were identical to the electronic.

A member of the commission's media office, Imad Jamil, told a local television channel, "So far, 95% of the manual counting has been accomplished in the total number of stations, which amounted to 3,681." Jamil said there were 356 complaints, 2 of which were red.

"The results of the manual counting were consistent with the electronic results," he affirmed, which he underscored was done with the presence of monitors and international observers. 

The Independent High Electoral Commission added the results reached at these stations to the preliminary results.

The IHEC announced three days ago that the manual counting would be over within a week, after announcing Wednesday that they would be manually recounting the votes at over 3000 polling stations to ensure that the results were consistent with the electronic ones.

The manual recount came after several blocs and independent candidates appealed against the results. In the forefront of those who appealed against the results was the Fatah alliance.

The chairman of the Fatah alliance, Hadi Al-Amiri, expressed his rejection of the election results by saying, "The alliance rejects these fabricated results, regardless of the cost," asserting that Fatah would fiercely defend the votes of their candidates and electors.

The preliminary results showed that the Sadrist movement was in the lead, with 73 out of 329 seats in Parliament.