You're close by......could you call the Sunnis and tell them there is only 12 incidents of voter fraud. TIA.
Sunni Arabs call Baghdad election results fraudulent, demand redress
By Jason Straziuso
ASSOCIATED PRESS
7:12 a.m. December 20, 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq – Sunni Arabs alleged Tuesday that last week's parliamentary elections were fraudulent, especially in Baghdad province, and they said if the irregularities are not corrected, new balloting must be held in Iraq's largest electoral district.
An electoral commission official said that while more than 1,000 complaints from the Dec. 15 vote had been received and were being investigated, only 20 were "very serious," and he didn't expect them to change the overall result, which will be announced in early January.
The United Iraqi Alliance – a Shiite party – won about 59 percent of the vote, according to returns from 89 percent of ballot boxes counted in Baghdad province. The Sunni Arab Iraqi Accordance Front received about 19 percent, and the Iraqi National List headed by Ayad Allawi, a secular-minded Shiite, got about 14 percent.
The Iraqi Accordance Front, a coalition of three major Sunni groups, rejected those results, warning of "grave repercussions on security and political stability" if the mistakes were not corrected.
The Sunni officials concentrated their protests on results from Baghdad province, the biggest electoral district.
"It was obvious to us that the forgery and the falsification have been taking place even before the opening of the ballot boxes," it said.
The front said it considered the results "a falsification of the will of the people."
If no measures are taken, "we will demand that the elections be held again in Baghdad," said Adnan al-Dulaimi, head of the alliance. "If this demand is not met, then we will resort to other measures."
But a senior member of the United Iraqi Alliance, Jawad al-Maliki, responded that the Sunnis needed to respect the outcome. "Democracy means accepting the opinion of the majority," he said.
Electoral commission official Farid Ayar said more than 1,000 complaints had been received, describing 20 as "very serious." He would not elaborate on them, but added that although they could cancel the votes cast at a particular polling station, they were not expected to alter the overall election results significantly.
"We are studying all of them, we have two or three committees studying them. They are serious and they may change the results, but I don't think the complaints will make a big change in the overall result," he said.
There were more than 33,000 polling stations in Iraq 18 provinces, and "if we have a serious violation at four polling stations that is not many voters," Ayar said.
Final results won't be ready before early January, instead of late December, in order to investigate the complaints, he said.
Ayar, who pledged the commission "will present anything, we can't hide anything from the people," also said he saw nothing unusual in the Sunni allegations.
"We hear various statements by the political alliances, coalitions, parties and entities. This is a normal thing in all elections. There are those who win and those who don't win," he said. "We respect all opinions, but these are the numbers we have. We deal with numbers. We have no intention of forging anything or adding to anything."
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said there had been 20 "red" – or serious – complaints as of Monday that could affect the outcome.
"Final results will not be announced until those red complaints are looked at," he said.
Also lodging a protest was Ibrahim al-Janabi, an official of Allawi's Iraqi National List.
"The elections commission is not independent. It is influenced by political parties and by the government," he said. "We announce that we have reservations about the counting of the ballots in the commission. We demand that the process be transparent."
Preliminary returns showed Iraqi voters divided along ethnic and religious lines with a commanding lead held by the religious Shiite coalition that dominates the current government.
The results for the 275-member parliament from 11 provinces showed the United Iraqi Alliance winning strong majorities in Baghdad and largely Shiite southern provinces.
Kurdish parties were overwhelmingly ahead in their three northern provinces, while results from one of the four predominantly Sunni provinces, Salahuddin, showed the Sunnis winning an overwhelming majority.
Early vote tallies suggested disappointing results for a secular party led by Allawi, a former prime minister and a U.S. favorite who hoped to bridge the often violent divide that has emerged between followers of rival branches of Islam since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
As expected, religious groups, both Shiite and Sunni, were leading in many areas – an indication that Iraqis may have grown more religious or conservative.
Still, the United Iraqi Alliance was unlikely to win the two-thirds majority, or at least 184 seats, needed to avoid a coalition with other parties.
A senior official in the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of the main groups in the alliance, said it was expecting to get about 130 seats.
The alliance is headed by cleric Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq's most powerful figures.
Jon Alterman, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said a likely outcome of the political process will be a Kurdish-Shiite alliance with "token" Sunni participation.
"Having power is one thing but tolerating not having power is going to make or break these elections," he said.
U.S. officials hope a coalition government involving Sunni Arabs will weaken a Sunni-led insurgency. Sunnis, a minority group favored under Saddam, turned out in large numbers after boycotting earlier elections.
In new reports of violence, a joint Iraqi-American patrol on the outskirts of Fallujah found the bodies of 14 people, some of whom were handcuffed and appeared to have been tortured, said Dr. Mohammed Hameed of the Fallujah hospital.
A driver for the Jordanian Embassy, was kidnapped while driving to work, Jordanian Prime Minister Marouf al-Bakhit said.
Mahmoud Suleiman Saidat, a Jordanian, was "kidnapped by 15 masked men near his residence" in Baghdad's southern neighborhood of Sadiya, al-Bakhit told parliament. He said Jordan was "seriously considering" moving its embassy in Baghdad to either Fallujah or to inside the Green Zone, the high security area inside Baghdad.
In other developments:
– Two police officers were shot to death by gunmen in Baqouba, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, and one officer was slain in the capital, police said.
– Gunmen in the southern town of Buhriz, a former Saddam stronghold about 35 miles north of Baghdad, opened fire on a car late Monday, killing four women and wounding three women and two children, police said.
– Attackers in southern Baghdad shot to death a member of the Badr organization, the former military wing of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, police Capt. Taleb Thamer said.
– Assailants in Baghdad attacked two convoys of trucks carrying goods for the U.S. military, setting fire to several of them, police and reporters at the scene said.
– Ukraine began the final withdrawal of its remaining 876 troops Tuesday. The government began calling home troops in March. President Viktor Yushchenko made a pullout from Iraq one of his campaign promises.
Associated Press writers Mariam Fam, Hamid Ahmed and Elena Becatoros contributed to this report from Baghdad. Jamal Halaby contributed from Amman, Jordan.
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