The Independent High Electoral Commission in Iraq said today, Wednesday, that the manual counting of ballot boxes started today and will end within a week, at a time when more Iraqi blocs and parties expressed their rejection of the results of the parliamentary elections that were held last Sunday.

The commission explained that the counting and sorting operations manually were launched in the capital, Baghdad, and include ballot boxes on which complaints were registered or whose results did not reach the commission's headquarters.

The Director of Procedures and Training at the Commission, Daoud Salman, confirmed that the process of counting and sorting problematic funds throughout Iraq will end within a week.

The commission had said yesterday in a press conference in Baghdad that the process of re-counting and manual counting will affect more than 6,000 electoral boxes, which is equivalent to 6% of the votes of the electorate, explaining that resorting to manual counting and sorting is caused by the failure of electronic devices in those electoral centers during the day of the poll. .

Winners Map

The commission published, the day before yesterday, the names of the election winners on its website, without referring to the political blocs they represented in elections in which the participation rate reached 41%, the lowest since 2005.

And based on the names of the winners, the official news agency in Iraq stated that the Sadrist bloc topped the results with 73 seats out of 329, while the "Progress" bloc, led by the dissolved Parliament Speaker Muhammad al-Halbousi, won 38 seats, and in third place was the State of Law bloc, led by the Prime Minister. Former Nuri al-Maliki with 37 seats.


On the other hand, the preliminary results revealed a sharp decline in the share of the Al-Fateh Alliance led by Hadi Al-Amiri, which includes representatives of the Popular Mobilization factions close to Iran, as it won only about 14 seats, while it came second in the last elections with 47 seats.

Other parties that have armed factions opposed to the American presence in Iraq, whose electoral results have declined compared to the previous poll, such as the "Al-Sadiqoon" movement led by Qais Khazali, and the "Huqooq" movement, which is considered a political representative of the Iraqi Hezbollah Brigades, where the numbers indicate that it won one seat. Just.

skeptical forces

Many political forces in Iraq questioned the results of the parliamentary elections, as the National Contract Alliance - which includes the Popular Mobilization and the Islamic Party - called on the Electoral Commission to reconsider the announced preliminary results.

The coalition added, in a statement, that the preliminary results revealed violations that led to the wasting of the rights of a number of candidates and revealed the absence of impartiality and objectivity, as he put it.

The coalition also called on the government to take a stance that preserves the rights of the Iraqi people, stressing that it will take all legal means and democratic frameworks to protect and defend the rights of the people, according to the statement.

For his part, the Iraqi National Coalition led by Iyad Allawi expressed its categorical rejection of the preliminary results of the elections in the country.

In a statement issued by the coalition, the coalition warned that insisting on these results might lead the country into new chaos and complications with ominous consequences, as he put it.

The statement described the election results as distorted, considering that they excluded many of those who gained popular confidence, including the candidates of the National Coalition.

The coordinating body of the so-called Iraqi resistance - which includes a number of armed factions - also said that there is evidence that it described as dangerous, showing the fabrication of the preliminary results announced by the Electoral Commission, which calls for emphasizing the invalidity of the announced results, as she put it.

chest call

For his part, the leader of the Sadrist movement, Muqtada al-Sadr, whose bloc is leading the preliminary results in the legislative elections, called on all parties that objected to these results to exercise restraint and adhere to the legal methods regarding the objection.

Al-Sadr also called on these parties to show a patriotic spirit and not to resort to the unfortunate consequences, as he put it.

Al-Sadr stressed, in a tweet, that it is not important who will be the winner, but rather helping the Iraqi people in terms of service and security.

He pointed out that the political differences over the ballot boxes, the delay in announcing the results, and the pressure on the Electoral Commission will be the first negative results that will harm the people, not the political blocs.

In a related context, the "Eye" network, a non-governmental organization concerned with monitoring elections in Iraq, reported that it had noticed confusion in the process of announcing the preliminary results of the legislative elections in the country.

The network called on the Independent High Electoral Commission to investigate the extreme accuracy in counting the votes, and to complete the counting and sorting of the remaining centers postponed due to technical malfunctions.

She stressed the need to announce the results in full in all governorates as soon as possible, and to determine the names of the winners of the seats in each electoral district.

It also called for clarification of the percentage of participation in the elections based on clear numbers.

It is noteworthy that Sunday’s elections were held a year earlier than they were scheduled, in the wake of widespread protests in Iraq, starting in early October 2019 and continuing for more than a year, and toppling the previous government led by Adel Abdul-Mahdi in late 2019.