Iraq’s parliament successfully held its fourth emergency session to discuss election results on Monday, pushing the session until late afternoon while waiting for holding quorum. At least 165 lawmakers need to be attending for a parliamentary session to kick off legitimately. More so, the Iraqi parliament approved manual recounting of 10 percent of votes in the May 12 parliamentary election amid allegations of fraud, forgery and irregularities. If there is 25 percent difference between the results of the manual and electronic count, then all Iraqi provinces are to undergo a full manual recount.
The parliament’s decision also called for ‘voiding expat votes and conditional voting in internal displacement camps in Anbar, Salahuddin, Nineveh and Diyala provinces.’
Their votes were cancelled out due to the abundance in evidence of forgery and dissuasion of voters.
For his part, Parliament Speaker Salim al-Jabouri called on judicial authorities and the Integrity Commission charged with probing election results to maintain the democratic practice in the political process in the country.
Full Article: Iraqi Parliament Approves Manual Recounting of Election Votes | Asharq AL-awsat.
