The “Kirkukna” list talks about fraud that caused it to lose more than 3,000 votes, and the Commission responds
The “Kirkukna” list talks about fraud that caused it to lose more than 3,000 votes, and the Commission responds
2023-12-23 04:51
The head of the Kirkukna list, Muhammad Mahdi al-Bayati, with a Turkmen Shiite majority, Muhammad Mahdi al-Bayati, told Shafaq News Agency, “The Kirkuk elections were affected by tampering with devices and fingerprints, and the fingerprints of our voters did not appear in many stations,” noting that his list lost “from 50 to 120 votes in Every electoral box is in most of the electoral centers in the Turkmen and Shiite regions.”
Al-Bayati revealed that “an employee at the counting and sorting center was caught wearing (half-paws) sabotaging and invalidating Kirkukna’s electoral forms,” stressing that “his list took a documented photo of him and submitted an official complaint to the commission attached to a photo of the employee in the act.”
He also stated, “We lost more than 3,000 votes in the general vote due to tampering and invalidations, and the matter also affected the private vote. We secured thousands of votes across crowds, but we only obtained dozens of votes.”
The Kirkona list obtained 22,700 votes in the Kirkuk Council elections, but was unable to reach the threshold for a seat in the Kirkuk Council.
On the other hand, the media director of the Kirkuk Electoral Office, Ali Abbas Dhiyab, responded to what Al-Bayati said, saying, “Any party or candidate has the right to submit appeals and complaints, and it is a legitimate right that we deal with professionally through the election controls. We received 41 complaints during the counting and sorting, and they were referred to the National Office of the Commission for decision.” and making legal decisions.
Diab stated that “challenging the election results is normal, and if there is tampering, the complaining party must provide the necessary evidence,” stressing that “the Kirkuk Commission completed the stages of the elections in all their details with high professionalism, in the presence and testimony of political forces and observers from all political entities.”
He pointed out that “entity observers are present from the first stages of updating the voter registry and biometric registration until the counting and sorting is completed.”
The results of the Kirkuk local elections resulted in the victory of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan’s (Kirkuk, Our Strength and Our Will) list with (5) seats, the Kurdistan Democratic Party with two seats, the Arab Alliance in Kirkuk with (3) seats, the United Iraqi Turkmen Front with two seats, the Leadership Alliance with two seats, and the Pan-Arabism Alliance One seat, while the candidate (Emile Boutros Constantine Ibrahim Agha) won the Christian quota seat.
Kirkuk is one of the disputed areas between Erbil and Baghdad covered by Article 140 of the Constitution, and it was subject to a joint authority between the Kurdistan Region and the federal government before the independence referendum held by the region in September 2017.
Article 140 stipulates the removal of demographic policies conducted by Saddam Hussein’s regime in the disputed areas in favor of the Arabs at the expense of the Kurds, and then a census of the population before the final step, which is holding a referendum according to which the population determines whether they wish to join the Kurdistan Region or remain under the administration of Baghdad.
The implementation stages of the article were scheduled to be completed by the end of 2007, but security and political problems prevented this
In 2019, the Federal Supreme Court ruled that Article (140) of the Constitution of the Republic of Iraq remains in force, stressing that this continues until its requirements are implemented and the goal of its legislation is achieved.
shafaq.com
