Kurdish parties slam Iraqi President over ‘inaction’ toward election scandal
Three Kurdish parties on Thursday heavily criticized the President of Iraq’s ‘inaction’ toward the Members of Parliament in Baghdad’s decision to annul a number of results from polling stations across the country.
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Three Kurdish parties on Thursday heavily criticized the President of Iraq’s ‘inaction’ toward the Members of Parliament in Baghdad’s decision to annul a number of results from polling stations across the country in the recent and highly contested national elections and demand a manual recount in others.
“The President [Fuad Masum] has been silent at a time that warrants action on behalf of the constitution. Instead, he delves into matters that are not within his purview,” read a joint statement released by the Movement for Change (Gorran), Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU), and Kurdistan Islamic Group (Komal).
The statement comes after the Iraqi parliament on Monday, without reaching quorum, passed a seemingly non-binding resolution that calls for a redo of the national elections should there be a 25 percent discrepancy in votes between a manual count and the electronic ballot results of 10 percent of all polling stations, randomly selected.
The three Kurdish political parties were part of a six-party group that came out immediately after unofficial election results were announced with allegations of fraud, claiming the newly-introduced electronic ballot casting system had been tampered with and called for a manual recount of the votes.
The statement accused Masum, one of the founders and member of the PUK, of being “deep in the trenches, defending counterfeiters,” and not working to “perform his duties as President of a nation.”
“We call upon the President to respect the constitution and other powers, and to be impartial and to refrain from bias or from defending the crooked and corrupt,” the parties stated.
They also called on Masum to be “the leader of all Iraqis, not just of his party or any other political entity.”
The head of the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) on Tuesday defended the Iraqi election results, stating there were "many legal violations in Monday’s [parliamentary] session in Baghdad, including failure to reach quorum."
Editing by Nadia Riva