Iraqi Turkmen say Kirkuk polls should be 'special case'

BAGHDAD

The Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITF) on Monday called on the country’s Supreme Judicial Council to deal with the issue of parliamentary polls in the Kirkuk province as “a special case”, condemning what it said it were“attempts to hide rigging crimes”.

The Turkmens alongside Arabs of the northern Iraq’s oil-rich city of Kirkuk ended last week a two-week sit-in in protest of poll results, saying rigging had occurred in favor of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

“The Iraqi Turkmen Front regrets the consequences of the abhorrent policies that political circles confer in Baghdad through their attempts to hide the crimes of fraud and electronic theft," Arshad Salihi, the leader of the ITF, said in a statement Monday.

Salihi called on the Iraqi religious clerics to show insistence to competent parties to "not waste the rights of the residents of Kirkuk whose votes have been stolen”, according to the statement.

He also called on the Supreme Judicial Council and the Federal Court to “deal with Kirkuk as a special case [...]".

Many Turkmen and Arabs in oil-rich Kirkuk believe that the results of the May 12 poll were manipulated -- especially in Irbil and Kirkuk -- and therefore demand a recount.

Iyad Allawi, a former Iraqi vice-president and the head of the Al-Wataniya coalition, has likewise criticized what he described as “dubious” actions by Iraq’s official electoral commission in regards to the May 12 poll.

In May, the electoral commission announced that it had annulled all ballots cast at 103 polling stations in the Baghdad, Anbar, Nineveh, Saladin and Irbil provinces.

To what extent the move affected final poll results, however, remains unclear.

According to those results, Muqtada al-Sadr's Sairoon coalition won 54 parliamentary seats, followed by a Hashd al-Shaabi-linked coalition (47 seats) and Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi's Victory bloc (42 seats).

The Irbil-based Kurdistan Democratic Party, meanwhile, picked up 25 seats in the assembly.

Final results were announced several days after Iraqis cast ballots in the country's first parliamentary election since 2014.

Preliminary results had been announced days earlier, but widespread fraud allegations had reportedly delayed a final vote count.