Voting employee close electronic counting and sorting device of a polling station on May 12, 2018. (Xinhua/Khalil Dawood)
BAGHDAD, May 24 (Xinhua) -- The Iraqi government held a meeting Thursday to discuss allegations of fraud and irregularities in the parliamentary election held on May 12, a government statement said.
The Iraqi Council of Ministers (cabinet), headed by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, met with top judicial and intelligence officials and the security committee of the electoral commission to discuss immunity of the electronic devices used in casting and counting the votes for the first time in the Iraqi election, the statement said.
The cabinet appointed a special committee to investigate the allegations before sending its recommendation to the council of ministers, high judicial council and the federal court to take their decision about the election process and its results, according to the statement.
Many Iraqi parties, especially in the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan and the disputed areas, including Kirkuk province, have complained about alleged irregularities and forgery in the parliamentary election.
The complaints put the Iraqi Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) under pressure, as the electoral commission has not carried out manual recount of many ballot boxes and depended only on the electronic count of the votes.
Earlier, Riyadh al-Badran, head of the electoral commission, told a press conference that "there is no justification for a manual recount yet," despite many accusations of voter fraud.
On May 13, al-Wataniyah (National) Coalition, led by Vice President Ayad Allawi, called for a revote of the May 12 parliamentary election due to a low turnout of Iraqi voters and irregularities.
A statement by Allawi's coalition attributed the call to "the low turnout of the Iraqi people in the election, spread of violence, fraud, deception and the purchase of votes."
On May 17, the United Nations special envoy to Iraq Jan Kubis issued a statement, calling on the IHEC to carry out an immediate and thorough investigation into all complaints concerning the election.
The Iraqi parliament also called on May 19 for measures to instill confidence in the election process after complaints by political entities of alleged irregularities and forgery.
On the same day, the electoral commission announced the final results of the parliamentary election, which showed that the al-Sa'iroon Coalition, led by Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, was the front-runner and won 54 seats in the upcoming 329-seat parliament.
The results showed that al-Fath Coalition, led by Hadi al-Ameri, came in the second place with 47 seats, while the al-Nasr Coalition, led by Abadi, came in third with 42 seats. The State of Law Coalition, headed by Vice President and former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, garnered 25 seats.
The two major Kurdish parties, Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), headed by Masoud Barzani, and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) took the lead in the Kurdish region and in the ethnically-mixed province of Kirkuk with 25 seats for the KDP and 18 for the PUK, according to IHEC figures.
However, despite the calls for investigation into the election process, the winning coalitions have been busy with tough negotiations to form the largest alliance that will be announced in the first parliament session, and then the largest alliance will designate new prime minister who will form a cabinet that would rule the country in the next four years.
On May 12, millions of Iraqis went to 8,959 polling centers across the country to vote for their parliamentary representatives in the first general election after Iraq's historic victory over the Islamic State (IS) group last December.
