Iraqi Sunnis reject early vote returns
Foreign Desk Report

BAGHDAD (Iraq)—Sunni Arabs on Tuesday challenged partial returns from Iraq’s parliamentary elections, calling them a “falsification of the will of the people” and saying evidence of fraud was abundant. Iraq’s election commission, meanwhile, said final results won’t be ready before early January, instead of late December, in order to complete the investigation into various complaints. Commission official Farid Ayar said more than 1,000 complaints had been received.
Sunni Arab officials suggested Iraq’s security and stability were at stake if their complaints about the Dec. 15 vote were not addressed. Officials concentrated their protests on results from Baghdad province, the biggest electoral district. Election officials said the United Iraqi Alliance — a Shiite party — took about 59 percent of the vote 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. If no measures are taken, said Adnan al-Dulaimi, head of the alliance, “we will demand that the elections be held again in Baghdad. ... If this demand is not met, then we will resort to other measures.” 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 protesting the results 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.”
A senior member of the United Iraqi Alliance, Jawad al-Maliki, responded that the Sunnis needed to respect the outcome at the ballot box. “Democracy means accepting the opinion of the majority,” he said. Gunmen, meanwhile, killed two police officers in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, police said. Elsewhere, a driver for the Jordanian Embassy, was kidnapped after his car was “intercepted” by three vehicles as he was driving to work Tuesday, Jordanian government spokesman Nasser Judeh said in Amman. Preliminary election 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.