Allawi camp alleges Iraq vote fraud

Published: 12/17/2005

BAGHDAD - High-profile electoral candidates backing former Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi complained Saturday of polling fraud after this week's parliamentary election.

"There were many violations in several provinces and there is widespread concern among the electorate who feel state bodies and the electoral commission failed in their task," former planning minister Mehdi al-Hafez told a news conference in Baghdad.

"The results that have been announced are incorrect and are meant to influence public opinion," Hafez said.

He was speaking after reports of a sweeping victory for the main religious Shiite coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), in the nine southern provinces in Thursday's general election.

More:
http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=90662

That they speak about fraud is an indication that Allawi lost big time and that the fundamentalists are the clear winners of this election.

Nibras Kazimi provides a first analysis of the preliminary election results:

Iraq’s Inevitable Cluster-F*ck

It was a phenomenal election: not that some eleven million Iraqis came out to vote, but that they managed to turn the act of choosing their political affiliation into an allegory for civil war.

For 95% of the population, each voted according to his or her sect or race. Iraq’s Shia did not vote as a confident majority: they followed the voting pattern of a ghettoized minority still scarred from many years of dictatorship. Rather than think for themselves and exercise their individual right to choose, they have abdicated this responsibility in favor of their behemoth communal shepherd: Grand Ayatollah Sistani. This behavior is dangerous, and it marks the prelude to all-out civil war. (...)

UIA: 130 (likely to increase slightly, includes satellite Sadrist lists)
Consensus: 45 (likely to increase slightly)
Kurdish: 55
Allawi: 20 (likely to decrease slightly)
Mutlag: 15 (likely to decrease slightly)
Mithal Al-Alusi will probably walk away with two seats. Ahmad Chalabi—in the rosiest scenario—would get two seats. (...)

I also predict that the US government is not going to help things by pushing a triumphant UIA block to bend over backwards for the Sunnis, especially on hot-button issues like de-Ba’athification and altering the constitution. The mullahs of next-door Iran, the real patrons of the UIA, are not interested in striking a deal with the Americans, and would love, more than anything, to have Iraq bubble over at this point.

More:
http://talismangate.blogspot.com/2005/12/iraqs-inevitable-cluster-fck.html

wannabe bights the dust.

You sack of shit.

Maybe they could have a "Supreme moment" and do an Iraqi version of the US song and dance. But then, Scalia said their decision in 2000 in Bush v Gore was not to be taken as precedent, so maybe Allawi is just S.O.L.

couldn't fix the election for his good pal Allawi? OMG, this is rich, the totals must be so bad even the Bushbots can't fix it.

Welcome to American style Democracy!!!!!!! bunch of friggin fools

majority takes the election. As Gome Pyle would say, "Su-prize, su-priiiize".

How'd we ever get such a bunch of dumb f**ks in Washington? Including a lot of our own dems? Couldn't see this one coming, could they? Of course they could, the pukes are just powerless to stop the mess the caused and the dems are too frigging gutless to stand up and say "hey, this is what you get when incompetent lying greedy power hungry chickenhawks try to be Barney Badass in another part of the world". Like the Iraqis haven't had to cope with foreign conquerors before. And who always won? Jeez, seems to me that it was the Iraqis. Oh well, never live and learn. That's their motto.

When we are lucky to have 40% here?

the 2004 election. They are just learning from Bush/Cheney.

there were 25 million Iraqis when the war started. If 11 million voted and that is 95% of the population it seems as though the US has killed a lot more Iraqis than the 30,000 dimson stated. Idiotboy makes saddam look like a cub scout in the area of torture and mass graves.

He probably wanted to say that 95% of the people who did vote chose to vote along sectarian lines.

95% tells one that junior has control of the media and Negroponte the super intel guy is losing his grip in the Middle East.

correct, Iraq was uspossed to have a population of twenty five million people. Only eleven million showed up to vote. Only hell that is an incredible number and like you say Americans are lucky to get 40% turnout.

U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote :
Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror

by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times (9/4/1967: p. 2)

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3-- United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.

According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.

The size of the popular vote and the inability of the Vietcong to destroy the election machinery were the two salient facts in a preliminary assessment of the nation election based on the incomplete returns reaching here.

NYT. 9/4/1967: p. 2.

There's nothing like learning from history.

They are now in Los Angeles

snip>
"We want to announce the elections results as soon possible so that the public can rest," Abdul-Hussein Hendawi said. "Getting the final elections results may not happen before 10 more days, maybe more, maybe less."

He cautioned there was no official date for their release because the commission was "taking the needed time to review the complaints" made about the handling of the election and expected to get more.

Hendawi said about 200 complaints had been received so far, including numerous reports of violations at some of the 15 polling stations set up outside Iraq. He refused to identify the countries involved in those complaints.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051217/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq;_ylt=AlnYcEX__ReV75sCLLrSRYCs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--

Religious Shiite Coalition Sweeping South;
Allawi's Showing Weak (...)

AFP says that in Najaf, its sources say 80 percent of the vote went to the United Iraqi Alliance (religious Shiite coalition), and that the turnout was 85 percent. Some early returns suggest some seats going to tribal leaders in the Middle Euphrates. It doesn't much matter, since they will certainly vote with the UIA on anything important-- they are close to Grand Ayatollah Sistani. For all practical purposes, the UIA will be able to depend on all 8 parliamentarians elected from Najaf.

The same source says that early returns showed the UIA getting 70 percent of the votes in the mixed Babil province. (If this result holds, it is a sign that the UIA may do very well indeed, since it means that the Sunni vote in the mixed provinces was disproportionately small. If the UIA takes most seats in Babil, Diyala and Baghdad, all mixed, then it will certainly dominate parliament). In Babil, Allawi's National Iraqiyah list was getting 17 percent and the Sunni Iraqi Concord Front was getting 10 percent. There are 11 seats at stake in Babil, and the apportionment is roughly proportional, so that would give the UIA 8, Allawi 2 and the Sunnis 1. (...)

The UIA was polling at 85 percent in Qadisiyah and 86 percent in Maysan. In other words, it was making a sweep of these 5 overwhelmingly Shiite provinces, as I expected. (...)

One thing seems pretty clear at this point: Iyad Allawi is highly unlikely to be prime minister. His people were putting around rumors that a lot of Sunnis would vote for him, or that the Shiites of the south had turned against the fundamentalist Shiite UIA. The early returns aren't showing either allegation to have been true. As for Ahmad Chalabi, his Iraqi National Accord seems to have sunk without a trace as far as early leaked returns are showing. These "secular" candidates with close ties to the US CIA and Pentagon just are not very popular in Iraq, except among a thin sliver of the urban middle classes to whom US officials and journalists are most likely to talk.

More:
http://www.juancole.com/2005/12/religious-shiite-coalition-sweeping.html

Once again the talking heads of our goebbelized media will be triumphalizing all over Sunday about waggy blue fingers and freemon and moxy and all the bliss we have bestowed on the benighted denizens of the region. (I was going to say 'on the towelheads and sandmonkeys' because that is what they actually think of the people of the middle east, but it is just too offensive.) But the situation is horrendous. We have handed Iran Greater Shiistan, a shiite federation that encompasses Iran and Iraq and will soon threaten the stability of every country in the region with a sizable shiite population. We have revived shiite fundamentalism - not very healthy at all BEFORE we invaded Iraq as it seemed the shiites of Iran had grown quite weary of life under the ayatollahs. Revived it, along with sunni jihadism, as the opposition force to American Imperialism. What we have done by our invasion is to destroy secular moderate modernism as a political force in the region. The situation is horrendous, we have become the proxy militia for the shiite faction in the civil war that will tear Iraq apart, and that will quite likely tear the entire region apart. If we stay we die, we shed our blood and treasure in the sands of mesopotamia, as we leave the region will descend into chaos. What an absolute mess we have created.

Thank you pResident Bush. History will treat you as you truly deserve.

See...here's the thing - the Mesopotamian peoples had an advanced civilization when those in this part of the world were living in piles of sticks. A fact pretty much lost on Shrub and the rest of his Neocon thugs.

Bush is fond of speaking condescendingly about the Iraqis, and lecturing them as if they don't know how to govern themselves. Talk about "hoist by your own petard." Hmmph!!

The Higher Independent Commission For Elections in Iraq admitted the occurrence of several violations in the parliamentary elections which started Thursday with the participation of all political and religious forces in the country.
The official at the commission Ezz Eddine Al-Muhammadi said in a press conference in Baghdad that his commission received 178 complaints concerning violations, including illegal propaganda campaigns, and a strong interference and campaigns during the election "silence phase" and violations of behavior of the observers at the voting centers.

The official indicated that the commission has two committees, one is from the legal committee in the commission and the other is from the bar association, to study all complaints. Earlier, the spokesman for the elections commission Fred Ayar ruled out in a press conference the announcement of the official results of the elections before two weeks. He expected the final announcement to be by the beginning of January. The Iraqi official estimated the number of participants in the elections between 10 to 11 million out of 15 million Iraqis eligible to vote in various parts of Iraq, which means if these figures are confirmed to be true, then the rate of participation is estimated to be between 67% and 73%.

These figures reflect the size of turnout in comparison with the 58% who took part in the elections of the Interim national society by the end of January this year and 63% in the referendum over the constitution on October 15th.
Unofficial preliminary results on Friday leaked from officials in the branch committees and the political parties indicate the progress of the Iraqi political forces was for each one in its own region according to the demographic and ethnic division of the areas. To this end, sources in the Elections Commission said that the Shiite United Iraqi Coalition List led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim is making progress in five governorates in south Iraq which are the governorates of al-Najaf, Karbala, al-Qadeseyah, Meisan, and Babel.

These sources explained that the coalition list got between 70 and 86% of the voters while the National Iraqi List led by Eyad Allawi occupied the second place in certain areas in south Iraq. Moreover, the Sunni Iraqi Coincidence (Tawafuq) front got 10% of the votes to take the third position in Babel governorate. In Kurdistan area, as was expected, unofficial preliminary results indicate the progress of the Kurdistani Alliance List which brings together the Kurdistani National Federation Party led by Jalal al-Talibani and the Kurdistani Democratic Party led by Masoud al-Barazani and other smaller parties. As for areas of a Sunni majority in the center of Iraq and in the governorates of Deyali, al-Anbar, Salah Eddine, and Ninwa, the Iraqi Coincidence (Tawafuq) front came in the first place followed by the Iraqi National List led by Eyad Allawi, while the list of the United Iraqi Coalition came fourth.


http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/051217/2005121701.html

Dead men voted in poll, claim Iraq parties

December 19, 2005

IRAQI political parties have complained of election violations, ranging from dead men voting to murder in the streets. The Iraqi electoral commission said it had received more than 200 complaints. A spokesman said many were exaggerated, but parties from all corners maintained that violence and fraud made the outcome suspect.

The commission is also investigating complaints that Shiite and Kurdish militias tried to intimidate voters in last week's election. "We have documented violations, threats and breaches," said Mehdi Hafedh, an official of the secular party of former prime minister Ayad Allawi.

The coalition of Shiite religious parties that is vying to retain its majority in Parliament warned that it would not accept results it deemed fraudulent.

In Washington, officials declared the elections clean and fair, while the US ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, said: "All reports indicate that Iraqis from all communities and regions turned out in large numbers, with only limited reports of violence and irregularities."

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/dead-men-voted-in-poll-claim-iraq-parties/2005/12/18/1134840742751.html

In the only manner Bush knows.

:rofl:

like letting dead men vote and such. Wow, wonders never cease with these people

A true American election.

funny how this travishamockery of an 'election' is being lauded as a great success in the us. so what happens when IRAQIS decide it wasn't?

we were shipping in from iran.