The final outcome of the Iraqi elections is being challenged by almost everybody. Prime Minister Al-Maliki, claimed that the election was free and fair from the outset, but has now decided that there has, after all, been widespread cheating. Perhaps this is because he is locked in a dead heat with former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Al-Allawi and his Iraqi Nationalist Movement? Both Maliki and Allawi are expected to win around 90 seats each in the 325 seat parliament.
Al Maliki should be believed when he says that there has been widespread cheating. He ordered most of it! Struan Stevenson, a senior member of the European Parliament has claimed that after he published an email address and invited Iraqis to contact him with evidence of fraud, he received hundreds of letters and emails from inside Iraq and from countries across the globe. Stevenson is a Scottish Conservative Euro MP and President of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq. He had tried to take a team of election observers to Iraq but was refused permission on security grounds. In frustration he decided to use the internet as an ad hoc election observation unit. The results were horrifying.
But Stevenson’s was a lone voice in this process. Teams of election observers inside Iraq claimed that they had seen little to worry them, despite the fact that violence, bombings and assassinations on polling day alone claimed 46 lives and seriously injured another 140! Stevenson has now sent a 40 page report detailing the most serious allegations to the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs – Baroness Ashton, as well as to the Chairman of the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. He was even asked by the Delegation for Relations with Iraq to send a copy of the report to the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) in Baghdad, with a request that they should investigate some of the more detailed claims, despite the fact that five IHEC officials were sacked for entering false figures into the election results computer.
BRAVE IRAQ DESERVES MORE THAN A PUPPET GOVERNMENT
Some of the more lurid attempts to manipulate the election results in Iraq were well documented. The Iranian regime, forever keen to meddle in Iraq’s affairs, moved heaven and earth to try to stop the non-sectarian, secularist and nationalist parties from winning seats. They were behind the bogus and illegal banning of more than 500 candidates from standing in the elections on trumped up charges that they were sympathetic to the former Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein. In fact the only thing most of the banned 500 candidates had in common was their vigorous opposition to Iranian meddling in Iraq’s internal affairs! There was also the brutal assassination of key political figures such as Dr Soha Abdallah in Mosul, the illegal arrest of Najem Harbi – head of the Al-Iraqia slate in Diala province, together with an extensive campaign of arrests of Al-Iraqia supporters in Salaheddin and south Baghdad.
Having excluded some of the key opposition figures from the election, Al Maliki then abused his position as Prime Minister and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, to prepare a comprehensive strategy for defrauding the Iraqi people out of their democratic choice.
Evidence was exposed of candidates being attacked and beaten by the Iraqi security forces in Karbala and leaflets being distributed threatening violence and death to supporters of some of the nationalist and non-sectarian parties. Massive amounts of, allegedly, Iranian cash was distributed to buy votes and in one case apparently pistols were purchased and handed out to villagers in return for their pledges of support.
According to allegations sent to Stevenson by senior politicians, serving army officers, polling station officials, teachers, journalists and ordinary citizens, every aspect of the election was beset by squalid acts of fraud. A senior member of Al-Maliki’s administration apparently travelled to Brussels to brief Stevenson following the vote, so disgusted was he by the extent of corruption and cheating which took place in the supposedly free and fair election.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis were refused permission to cast their votes in Europe on spurious grounds relating to an alleged lack of proper identification. Inside Iraq, on the day set aside for military personnel and prisoners to vote, widespread cheating was reported. Entire regiments were denied the right to vote because they were considered hostile to Al Maliki. Over 1500 youths were rounded up and imprisoned in Baghdad and presumably also in other Iraqi cities and told that they would only be released next day after they voted for Al Maliki.
Truck loads of ballot boxes filled with voting papers marked for Al Maliki were stopped at the Iran/Iraq border. Polling station officials claim they were ordered to stuff bundles of these into their ballot boxes on polling day. Military helicopters dropped leaflets on primarily Sunni enclaves around Baghdad threatening violence and death to anyone who dared to vote for Allawi. Iraqi troops were allegedly ordered to fire mortar rounds into the same Sunni areas to prevent the people from leaving their homes to vote. Many lost their lives as a result.
At the end of polling, election observers were ordered to leave voting stations, the doors were locked and corrupt officials allegedly stuffed ballot boxes with pro-Maliki voting slips. They marked countless pro-Allawi voting slips with a second tick to render them invalid and altered figures on their final returns.
Despite all of these well-laid plans by Al-Maliki and his Iranian allies, the repeated bomb blasts, death threats and intimidation failed to stop millions of courageous Iraqi secularists from casting their votes for Ayad Allawi and his non-sectarian, nationalist party. Tired of the years of violence and corruption and the creeping, evil influence of Iran, brave Iraqis went to the polls in droves to cast their votes against Al Maliki and his henchmen. Had Stevenson not exposed the fraud in the early part of the election, there is no doubt that Al Maliki would have won by a landslide. But Stevenson’s timely intervention led to increased media scrutiny and caused the later stages of the great fraudulent scheme to falter. In fact Ayad Allawi should have won a decisive victory, but the early attempts at rigging and manipulation have left his party neck and neck with Al Maliki.
Now Maliki is demanding a complete recount of every single vote. This would necessitate the re-deployment of over 400,000 counting agents and would clearly provide Maliki with another grand opportunity to cheat and emerge victorious. Al Maliki is determined to cling to power at all costs. He has even issued threatening remarks about a return to violence if the votes are not recounted. With three divisions of the Iraqi army owing their entire allegiance to him, these may not be idle threats.
Meanwhile the EU the US and the UN continue to play the role of the three wise monkeys! They see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil. Alarmed that any allegations of a fraudulent election might sow the seeds of renewed violence which would thwart America’s plans for imminent troop withdrawal, they have instead insisted that the election was largely fair. Like Pontius Pilate, they wish to wash their hands of the whole Iraqi affair and move on. The mess and misery they leave in their wake seems of little importance.
In Tehran, the mullahs are rubbing their hands together in glee. Past-masters at manipulating elections in their own country, they can now look forward to a new coalition government in Iraq which will require the approval of Moqtada-al-Sadr, the firebrand pro-Iranian cleric, whose Mahdi army killed scores of US and British troops and who now holds the balance of power in the Iraqi parliament. With his help, Al Maliki may yet re-emerge as the puppet Prime Minister of Iraq, but it will not be with the popular approval and support of the majority of Iraqis, nor will it be in the interests of the West. As Iran tightens its grip on Iraq, the West should shudder in dismay and hope that more people like Struan Stevenson are prepared to stick their heads above the parapet and cry fowl when they see democracy defrauded on this scale.
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