Pro-Iran parties reject final election results, demand vote abolishment

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iran-backed political parties, defeated in Iraq’s parliamentary vote in October, reaffirmed their rejection of the election results hours after they were officially announced on Tuesday, saying the outcome has been “tampered” with and stressing their intention to pursue a lawsuit filed before the Federal Court to cancel the vote.

“We reject the results of the current elections, as it has become clear and doubtless that the electoral commission had prepared the election results in advance at the expense of the will of the Iraqi people,” a statement from the Coordination Framework read, which was formed by losing party leaders to jointly reject the election results.

The election results have been “majorly tampered with,” leading the framework to reject them, it added, demanding the cancellation of the vote and pledging to challenge the process in the Federal Supreme Court of Iraq. 

IHEC on Tuesday said there were no evidence of election fraud in the election results.

Iraq held a parliamentary election on October 10. The Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) announced the official results on Tuesday, after resolving all of the complaints submitted by objecting parties. The appeals have had an impact on the official results, leading to changes in five seats across some provinces.

The Fatih Alliance, which is affiliated with the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF or Hashd al-Shaabi in Arabic), was the second-largest bloc in the outgoing parliament with 48 seats. It won just 17 seats, according to the official results, increasing it from 15 following the manual recount and inspection of appeals.

However, the alliance has also signed the statement demanding the cancellation of the vote. The National State Forces Alliance, between former prime minister Haider al-Abadi and Shiite cleric Ammar al-Hakim, another member of the Coordination Framework, secured just four seats.

PMF-allied parties have previously rejected the preliminary results, which were published a week after the election was held, staging repeated protests.

The final results also confirmed the Sadrist bloc to be the winner of the vote. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr secured 73 out of the parliament’s 329 seats.

He thanked the electoral commission in a tweet following the announcement of the final results.

The commission started sending the names of the winners to the Federal Court for ratification on Wednesday, state media reported. 

The electoral commission began sending their appeal investigations to the judiciary on Sunday. It completed an inspection and manual recount of votes from thousands of stations that were the subject of complaints on November 8. Most of the appeals were rejected for lack of evidence or detail.

Once the results are ratified by the Supreme Court, a process of forming the government is set in motion, as dictated by the constitution. Within 15 days of the ratification of the results, the president calls on the parliament to meet, chaired by its eldest member, and elect a speaker and two deputies by an absolute majority. The parliament also elects a president by a two-thirds majority.

The president then tasks the largest bloc in the parliament with forming the government, naming a prime minister within 15 days of the election of the president. The prime minister-elect then has 30 days to name a cabinet.

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