After great preparations and wide international attention, the early legislative elections were held in Iraq yesterday, Sunday, the tenth of October, amid unprecedented security tightening, which began at seven in the morning and ended at six in the evening of the same day.

As soon as the polls closed, the country's High Electoral Commission announced that the vote counting and sorting operations were continuing, and that the final results would be announced 24 hours after the polls closed.

Al-Ghalai: The Commission is working to limit the number of participants in the elections through the centers spread throughout the country (Al-Jazeera Net)

Number of polling stations

Commission spokeswoman Jumana al-Ghalai stated that the number of electoral centers across the country amounted to 8,273 polling centers, with 55,041 polling stations, and that the number of candidates for the elections amounted to 3,227 candidates competing for 329 seats in the Iraqi parliament.

Al-Ghalay added that the number of international observers reached 1,877 international observers from the European Union and many foreign embassies in the country, as well as the United Nations and other Arab and international organizations, while the number of local observers reached 160,148 local observers, as well as agents of political blocs, who numbered 465. Alpha and 733 political party agents, according to Al-Ghalai.

As for the percentage of participation in the elections, Al-Ghalai explained in her interview with Al Jazeera Net that the commission is still working to limit it through the centers spread in various governorates, and that the media will receive it as soon as it is announced.

According to the figures of the Electoral Commission, 24.9 million Iraqis are entitled to vote in the elections out of the country's total population of 40 million, as more than 800,000 Iraqis voted in the special poll that took place last Friday.

The 2018 elections witnessed the lowest level of participation since 2003, as the commission recorded the participation of 44% of the Iraqi electorate at the time, and this led the commission a few months ago to launch a wide media campaign to urge Iraqis to vote.

One of the polling stations in the city of Mosul, and the turnout seemed weak (Al-Jazeera Net)

poor turnout

Despite the great efforts of the Iraqi government and the Electoral Commission to encourage people to vote, many observers have noticed a low turnout, which may mean that the voter turnout may be within the limits of the previous elections in 2018, or less, according to journalist Riad Al-Hamdani.

He added to Al Jazeera Net that the early morning hours of the election day witnessed a weak turnout, then the rate of participation in the elections developed in various governorates in the afternoon hours, and soon witnessed a decline again as the situation continued as it was until the polls closed at six in the evening local time. Baghdad.

Al-Hamdani: Many electoral centers in Baghdad and the provinces witnessed malfunctions in the devices that read the electoral cards (Al-Jazeera Net)

Technical malfunctions

Regarding the most important indicators, Al-Hamdani added that many electoral centers in Baghdad and the provinces witnessed technical malfunctions in the devices that read the electoral cards, as well as other problems that permeated the process, which were represented in the failure of these devices to read the fingerprints of some voters, explaining that the Commission was able to remedy some technical malfunctions, according to saying.

For his part, Mahmoud Ezzo, professor of political science at Mosul University, believes that participation rates were low, which is confirmed by the facts, and this may reflect a real trend of frustration, which he described as “great” towards trust between the politician and the citizen, which needs to rebuild confidence in the coming years. .

Ezzo saw that the low participation in the elections reflects the frustration of citizens towards politicians (Al Jazeera Net)

Ezzo continues, in his speech to Al Jazeera Net, that these elections reflect the true percentage of participation away from what was previously happening of falsifying the will of the voters, as there was no electronic control over the percentages of participants, and then fraud and additions to the percentages of participants occurred before the results were announced, according to what was mentioned.

Ezzo pointed out that the real participation rates that the commission will announce will depend on the number of voters relative to the number registered with the commission, while approximately 1.6 million voters do not have a voter card, and therefore these will not be among the percentage that will be approved by the commission, which will lead to Distortion of the actual participation rate, he put it.

Al-Baydar believes that the experiences of all previous parliamentary sessions were frustrating for the Iraqi voter (communication sites)

Low turnout reflects frustration

It agrees with the proposal of Ezzo, a researcher in Iraqi political affairs, Ali al-Baydar, who saw that the experiences of all previous parliamentary sessions were frustrating for the Iraqi voter, which led to Iraqis not accepting the concept that the current elections will be more transparent and fair despite the precise criteria set by the commission in the electoral cycle. current.

In an interview with Al-Jazeera Net, Al-Baydar comments that, as a result of the previous reasons, the Iraqi citizen believes that his participation has become fictitious without the possibility of making a real change in the political reality, although the new electoral law is much better than the previous laws and gave more scope for competition.

Al-Baydar concludes that the Iraqis have been subjected to organized calls by political parties aimed at urging Iraqis to boycott and not participate in it, which these parties benefit from in ensuring that their audience vote only in order to deliver it to Parliament, as he put it.

One of the polling stations in Nineveh Governorate, northern Iraq (Al-Jazeera Net)

Returning to Professor of Political Science at the University of Mosul, Mahmoud Ezzo, he believes that the political equation in this electoral cycle will be extremely difficult, especially since the political conflict seems clear through what is published by the various political blocs that they obtained a large number of seats, which reflects a kind of The war, which he described as a "preemptive psychological", which all political blocs adopted before the results of the elections and the entry of the winning blocs into the alliance-building stage.

The head of the Iraqi Electoral Commission, Judge Jalil Adnan, had confirmed in a statement, 3 hours before the polls closed, that the participation rate exceeded one-third of the number of voters, pending the announcement of the final voting results by the commission.

No security breaches

In contrast to previous electoral cycles since 2005, the country did not record major security breaches during the voting process that took place on Sunday, which the Iraqi security services considered a great success, especially since the country did not witness a curfew.

This is confirmed by the Iraqi journalist, Riyad Al-Hamdani, through his observations from the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, where he says that the security forces helped voters reach the polling stations with no security breaches recorded as in previous electoral cycles, and that the electoral atmosphere was safe and completely different from previous years.

In this context, the Supreme Security Committee for Elections said that it issued strict orders to tighten guarding and protection procedures around polling centers, registration centers and the commission’s warehouses after the end of the general poll in order to preserve the integrity of the ballot boxes, in an attempt not to repeat the experiences of previous sessions that witnessed the burning of the commission’s warehouses in the capital, Baghdad, and a number of provinces.

For its part, the Security Media Cell confirmed that the detachments of the Supreme Security Committee for Elections arrested 77 people for committing violations related to the conduct of the electoral process in the governorates of Baghdad, Nineveh, Diyala, Kirkuk, Basra, Anbar, Salah al-Din, Erbil, Wasit and Diwaniyah.

The cell's statement added that it referred the violators to the judicial committees formed by the Supreme Judicial Council in preparation for taking legal measures against them and knowing the extent of the damage they caused.

Praise be to God, we have completed our duty and promised to hold fair and safe elections and we have provided the capabilities to make them successful. I thank our honorable people, I thank all the voters, candidates, political forces, observers, workers in the Electoral Commission, the heroic security forces that provided security, the United Nations and the rational religious authority.

— Mustafa Al-Kadhimi

Meanwhile, the Iraqi Prime Minister, Mustafa Al-Kazemi, thanked the Iraqi people, voters, candidates, political forces, observers, and employees of the Electoral Commission, security forces and the United Nations for their role in completing the electoral process smoothly.