After the appeal, will those objecting to the results of the Iraqi elections resort to internationalization and boycott?

BAGHDAD

- The forces objecting to the results of the Iraqi legislative elections, whose audience gathered in front of the Green Zone in central Baghdad, entered their fourth week and are awaiting a change in the results of the last poll. Perhaps the manual counting will change - even partially - the number of parliamentary seats obtained by the opposition parties in the new parliament. However, the correspondence of the results of the electronic and manual counting and sorting processes - according to what the High Elections Commission announced - prevented this, which threatens to open the door to further escalation by the objecting blocs, which leads to more assertive measures by the authority.

The Iraqi Electoral Commission completed the counting and sorting of 4,324 polling stations manually, and announced that they matched the results of the electronic counting after receiving more than 1,400 appeals from the blocs objecting to the results of the poll that was organized on the tenth of last October.

A member of the Coordinating Committee for the Demonstrations of the Opposing Parties, Ayed Al-Hilali - to Al-Jazeera Net - says that the protesters' options will remain open according to what was approved by the Iraqi constitution, as the protesters may resort to escalation, expanding the demonstrations and closing the gates of the Green Zone after the Electoral Commission announced that there is no change in the results.

The dialectic of internationalization

Al-Hilali continues - in his speech to Al-Jazeera Net - that the demonstrators will work to internationalize the issue of elections, by resorting to Arab and international bodies and institutions and addressing the non-permanent members of the Security Council because of the results produced by the Commission that will have a negative impact on Iraq and threaten its civil peace and its slide into chaos.

Internationalization was opposed by international relations professor Mohamed Gohar;

Who explained the issue of the internationalization of elections, saying that "this process is carried out through two methods: the first is through a message submitted by the government - through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs - to the UN Security Council or the United Nations, and this method is unlikely to be carried out by the current government, especially after the international and international welcome of the election results."

As for the second method, Jawhar explains - to Al-Jazeera Net - that it lies in ensuring that one of the member states of the Security Council calls for an urgent meeting to discuss what the Iraqi opposition forces describe as violations of the electoral process, considering that it is a very distant matter;

Neither Russia nor China will do this, despite their proximity to the axis opposing the election results.

Opponents' steps

The Shiite coordination framework, which includes forces objecting to the election results - including the Al-Fateh Alliance, the State of Law, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq and the Hezbollah Brigades - expressed its objection to the method used in the counting and sorting procedures by the commission. They reject the procedures adopted by the commission by manually recounting and sorting without the participation of observers All opposition political entities.

In this context, member of the framework Salem Al-Abadi confirms - to Al-Jazeera Net - that the demands of the objectors include two conditions: the first is a comprehensive manual counting of all electoral stations, not only the contested, and the second is to assign independent parties the sorting process in addition to the participation of representatives of the objecting entities.

The member of the coordination framework hinted at proceeding with escalatory measures, in protest of what the Commission recently announced that the results of the manual count are in agreement with the electronic count, one of which is the option to boycott the entire political process.

The Al-Fateh Alliance and Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq movement warned against their approach to the option of a political boycott, in the event that the Electoral Commission insisted on not conducting a comprehensive manual counting of all electoral stations.

Al-Tamimi: There are many appeals that were not supported by significant legal evidence and are of no value (Al-Jazeera Net)

No re-election

After announcing that the results of the manual and electronic counting matched the results, those objecting to the results demanded that the elections be canceled and rerun, but the Head of the Judiciary, Faiq Zeidan, blocked these demands by confirming that no fraud had been proven based on reliable legal evidence.

Legal expert Ali Al-Tamimi agrees with Zaidan's opinion by saying that there are many appeals before the judiciary - formed under the Commission's law - whose number exceeded 3,000 complaints, many of which were not supported by significant evidence.

He confirmed to Al-Jazeera Net that - according to the law of the Electoral Commission - it is not possible to completely re-count and sort all electoral stations, pointing out that the law allows re-counting and sorting only 5% of each electoral station whose results are questionable.

On the other hand, Duraid Tawfiq, an expert in elections affairs, told Al Jazeera Net that the demand for a comprehensive manual countdown contradicts the laws;

Because the Electoral Commission is an executive body, and it is not possible to go to the manual count without a decision from the Iraqi Federal Court.