Allegations of fraud surface as election results trickle in

Baghdad: A senior member of Iraq's main secular opposition bloc yesterday protested against blatant fraud in Iraq's vote counting which has allegedly favoured Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki.

The Iraqi High Electoral Commission (IHEC), meanwhile, said the allegations of fraud were either politically motivated or fuelled by lack of understanding of the counting procedures. But it would nevertheless investigate any complaints it received.

"There has been clear and flagrant fraud," said Entisar Allawi, a senior candidate in ex-prime minister Eyad Allawi's Iraqiya bloc, the main rival to Al Maliki's State of Law Alliance.

"There were persons who manipulated or changed the figures to increase the vote in favour of the State of Law Alliance."

She said that Iraqiya's own election observers for last Sunday's poll had found ballot papers in garbage dumps in the northern disputed province of Kirkuk.

But Eyad Al Kina'ani, an official in Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission, told AFP such allegations were fuelled either by political motivation or a lack of understanding of the counting.

"When we receive any accusations and there are problems, we block the ballot box and start an investigation," Kina'ani said.

"We are used to receiving these accusations from political blocs because either they do not know our procedures or they have not had good results in the election.

1,000 complaints

"That is why they are talking about fraud."

On Thursday, Hamdiyah Al Husseini, another election commission official, said IHEC had received around 1,000 complaints over the vote, but did not provide further details.

Meanwhile, preliminary results are expected to continue to trickle in over the next two to three days with final results, including ballots from out-of-country and military voting, certified by the end of March. But most projections show Al Maliki's largely Shiite coalition in a very close race with Allawi, a secular Shiite.

Al Maliki, who has ruled for most of the past four years, appeared to be making a strong showing in the south against the Shiite religious coalition he broke away from to form his own political bloc. The early results released by the IHEC showed Al Maliki leading in the mainly Shiite provinces of Najaf and Babel south of Baghdad.

Allawi, with a broad coalition of mostly secular Shiites and Sunnis, has appealed to a large percentage of Iraqi voters disillusioned with religious parties who have been unable to deliver basic services or crack down on corruption.

As of Thursday, Allawi's Iraqiya list was leading in Diyala, northeast of Baghdad, and the Sunni Arab dominated province of Salahaddin, which includes former dictator Saddam Hussain's hometown of Tikrit.