EU observers will only observe, not interfere in Iraqi elections: official

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) will only observe the upcoming October 10 Iraqi elections and not interfere in them in any way, said the EU’s Chief Observer Viola von Cramon on Thursday. 

 “I am proud to lead this mission. We are here to watch and to analyze. We will not interfere or influence the process in any way”, said von Cramon in her opening remarks. “These are the elections of the Iraqi people.”

She pointed out that the EU has experience in observing elections in other countries.

“We have set up more than 200 election observation missions in 75 countries,” she said.

“So, in that respect, I think that the case of Iraq is not unique.”

Consequently, various challenges that might occur will not be new for them.

“But as I said, we cannot interfere, we will not interfere, we will only look, observe and document everything we can see we can hear,” she added.

Von Cramon also did not speculate on how much fraud might happen in this election.

“I cannot say who is interested in creating this, but it is not up to us, at that moment, to do any speculation on this level or on these activities, so we will be neutral, impartial and we’ll do our job at that time when this might come up,” she said.

The core team of the EU EOM consists of 12 election experts who arrived in Baghdad and Erbil on August 28. In mid-September, 20 long-term observers will join the mission and be deployed to different parts of the country.

Read More: EU sends Iraq election monitoring mission for upcoming vote

The mission's mandate is to conduct an independent and comprehensive analysis of the election process, the EU observation mission said in a press statement.

On election day, the mission will be reinforced by locally recruited short-term observers, drawn from the diplomatic community and a delegation of the European Parliament, the statement said.

This will bring the number of observers on polling day to about 80, coming from EU member states as well as Canada and Norway.