The Iraqi judiciary comments on the accusations of those rejecting the election results of systematic fraud

The head of the Supreme Judicial Council in Iraq, Judge Faiq Zaidan, announced - today, Thursday - that there is no legal evidence to prove the rigging of the parliamentary elections that were held on the tenth of last October, at a time when the head of the Al-Fateh Alliance, Hadi Al-Amiri, yesterday, Wednesday, threatened to boycott the process. The entire political situation in Iraq, if the challenges to the elections are not dealt with in a "real and serious" manner.

Zaidan said in an interview with the Iraqi News Agency (INA) that "election fraud has not been proven by legal evidence so far," noting that "the investigation into the killers of demonstrators in the vicinity of the Green Zone last Friday is continuing, and pending the completion of the work of the investigative committee formed by the Prime Minister." Mustafa Al-Kazemi to present it to the judiciary.

Zaidan explained - in the same interview - that "the investigation file of the attempt to assassinate Al-Kazemi is with the committee formed by the Prime Minister, and has not yet been presented to the judiciary, and is still in its early stages."

Regarding the talk about putting his name up as a candidate to head the new government, Judge Zidan continued that - on more than one occasion - he refused to take any position outside the judicial work.

Zaidan's statements come a day after the judicial body concerned with elections in Iraq began to consider the appeals that the Electoral Commission decided after recounting.

The Electoral Commission says that the results of manual counting were identical to electronic counting.

It is scheduled that the body affiliated to the Supreme Judicial Council will take 10 days to resolve the appeals file.

This comes while sit-ins continue near the vicinity of the Green Zone in the center of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, the sit-ins of the Shiite political blocs rejecting the results.

The protesters are demanding the re-counting and manual counting of all stations, and these blocs say that "systematic fraud in the elections led to a great loss of parliamentary representation."

Last Friday, protests in front of one of the gates of the Green Zone in central Baghdad were marred by violence and confrontations, during which a demonstrator was killed and dozens of protesters and security personnel were injured.

Two days later, at dawn last Sunday, Al-Kazemi survived an “assassination” attempt through an attack on his residence in the Green Zone in Baghdad with 3 booby-trapped drones, 2 of which were shot down, and the third exploded in the headquarters, injuring a number of his guards.

The incident was widely condemned at the local and international levels, and raised fears of an outbreak of internal fighting in Iraq.

Al-Amiri (right) considered that the Electoral Commission is a major cause of the political crisis (Reuters)

waving boycott

In a remarkable development, Hadi al-Amiri, the head of the "Al-Fateh" coalition, threatened to boycott the political process completely, saying, "We will not accept the imposition of wills, and we may resort to boycotting the entire political process, if the appeals are not addressed in a real and serious way."

Al-Amiri added - in statements published yesterday, Wednesday - that the representative of the United Nations mission in Iraq, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, controls the commission, and has a negative role and interventions outside the scope of its work, as he put it.

He pointed out that the confusion and confusion in the work of the Commission is a major reason for the current political crisis, noting that the Commission pledged before the elections several measures to reassure the political forces not to falsify the results, but it did not adhere to any of them.

Al-Amiri’s statement came - in a statement issued by his office - after he met in Baghdad with a delegation from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the two ruling parties in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.

The statement stated that Al-Amiri and the delegation of the National Union headed by Khaled Shwani expressed their strong rejection of the manipulation of the election results.

The "Al-Fateh" alliance (which is the political umbrella for armed Shiite factions, including Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, Kata'ib Hezbollah, and Harakat al-Nujaba) is the most prominent loser in the recent elections by obtaining 16 seats according to the preliminary results, after it came second in the 2018 elections with 48 seats.

The "Sadr bloc" - affiliated with Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr - topped the preliminary results with 73 seats out of 329, while the "Progress" bloc led by dissolved Parliament Speaker Muhammad al-Halbousi won 38 seats.

In third place came the "State of Law" bloc led by former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki with 34 seats.