After a weekend vote, Iraq’s Election Commission trickled out results for the next two days. “Final” numbers are being changed again, according to reports, after militias publicly declared themselves unhappy with the results and threatened to act. They promised to “defend the votes of our candidates and voters with all strength.”
The Sadrist Bloc won a decisive plurality of 73 seats, while the main militia faction, Fatah, was initially given 14 seats, a massive loss from the previous vote. The militias responded by condemning the commission’s “incompetence.”
To “remedy” this, the election commission began issuing revised results, despite having already done a hand count to confirm the results. The new results cut Sadrist seats from 73 to 69, and changed seven independent MPs from winners to losers, so that Fatah could have all those seats. The full final list is not available.
Reports allege that the voting machine figures could be off, causing the recount. The more reasonable supposition is that the election commission wants to avoid any violence by overturning anything close enough to get away with.
Its too early to know if this is going to be enough to change any coalition-making calculations in Iraq, as figures are just starting to come out and no party has nearly enough seats to form a government on its own.
Iraq can’t even cheat an election right, now.
Not that that matters; they’ve become flexible on the whole bullets versus ballots fine line.
US ‘democracy’ trainers obviously did a much better job than the military.
It should be noted the militia faction Popular Mobilization Forces and Fatah are resisting the US occupation and have been targeted many times by the US.
So, they are probably correct in their suspicions of election interference.
Popular politicians unexpectedly lose in a landslide to unpopular politicians?
Entirely expected in a US occupied country. The same happens in the US every “election”.