UPDATED: PUK spokesman retracts rejection of Kurdistan election results

Roughly an hour after the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan's (PUK) spokesperson Saadi Ahmed Pira told reporters that his party was rejecting the results of Sunday's Kurdistan Region’s parliamentary elections, alleging fraud, he told Kurdistan 24 that he rescinded the remarks.

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Roughly an hour after the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan's (PUK) spokesperson Saadi Ahmed Pira told reporters that his party was rejecting the results of Sunday's Kurdistan Region’s parliamentary elections, alleging fraud, he told Kurdistan 24 that he rescinded the remarks. 

It should be noted that the results had not yet been announced by the Independent High Electoral and Referendum Commission (IHERC), which oversees elections in the Kurdistan Region. As of the time of publishing, IHERC has still not released even preliminary results.

According to information the PUK leadership had received, “an extensive fraud had taken place in the Erbil and Duhok Provinces,” he claimed.

The initial comments were made at approximately 6:00 pm as Pira arrived in Baghdad as part of a leadership delegation to seek talks with major officials as part of negotiations for the election of the country's president. The PUK has held the post since 2006, but is now in competition with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) which has put forth their own candidate. 

Shortly afterward and an apparent response to Pira, Deputy Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region and leading PUK member Qubad Talabani told PUK-affiliated Kurdsat News, "It is early to accept or reject the results of the election."

At close to 7:00 pm, Pira told Kurdistan 24 that he retracted his previous remarks.

Retracting his previous call for rejection, Pira added that his earlier call was for “all organizations and political entities to investigate the matter [of fraud], and if the overseers of the ballot boxes suspect fraud, then they should cancel their results.”

On Sunday, 773 candidates from 29 political parties competed for a seat in the 111-seat parliament in the semi-autonomous region, vying for votes at 5,941 local voting centers. From the total 3,085,461 registered, 39 percent are from Sulaimani Province, 36 percent from Erbil, 23 percent from Duhok, and another two percent from the recently established Halabja Province.

Though the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region technically falls under the federal jurisdiction of the Iraqi parliament in Baghdad to which it sends provincial representatives, it has its own parliament in the region's capital of Erbil as well.

Pira's comments notwithstanding, the process appears so far to have gone much more smoothly than during the May 12 national elections, marred by malfunctioning electronic vote-counting devices which added to the strength of a chorus of political parties charging various forms of voter fraud throughout Iraq, including the Kurdistan Region. 

To alleviate such complications, IHERC announced early in its preparations that it would forego the use of the machines and count all ballots manually.

A new regulation also stipulates that the commission is charged with taking close-up photographs of each voter and that, in the event that formal complaints of irregularities or fraud are brought, investigations will be opened to scrutinize each claim.

Editing by John J. Catherine