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STRUAN STEVENSON, MEP The European Parliament, ASP 12G306, Rue Wiertz, B - 1047 Brussels (Belgium) Email: [email protected] Tel: +32-2 28 45710 Fax: +32-2 28 49710
DELEGATION FOR RELATIONS WITH IRAQ
PRESIDENT
PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release 8th
May 2014
WIDESPREAD FRAUD IN IRAQI ELECTIONS
There is growing concern that 9 days after the Iraqi elections no results have been posted, with
government sources claiming that no announcement will be made until the end of May. Political
leaders in Iraq who have already expressed dismay at widespread vote rigging during the elections,
now fear that further backstage manipulation of the results is taking place in an attempt to secure a
third term for the deeply unpopular and autocratic Nouri al-Maliki.
There is also extensive scepticism about the alleged 62% turnout at the elections, given the
background of rising violence in Iraq and the genocidal campaign being waged against the Sunni
population of Anbar Province. With vicious barrel bomb attacks on schools and hospitals in Fallujah
and Ramadi, and breached dams leaving more than half of Abu Ghraib district under water, many
political leaders think that a 62% voter turnout is a fiction.
Now Ayad Allawi, leader of al Iraqiya, has said that 2 million ballot papers are missing, raising deep
suspicions that major electoral fraud has taken place. News that all Iraqi police and army personnel
were issued with two ballot papers each, one in their camps and the other sent to their homes, has
compounded fears that the election was rigged.
The Iranian regime, which regards Maliki as their pliable puppet, is putting pressure on different
political factions to support him for a third term as prime minister. For the mullahs in Tehran, a non-
sectarian, fully democratic government in Baghdad would be anathema and they are pressing ahead
with their determination to secure another 4 years of authoritarian Shiite domination of Iraq, with the
strings being pulled by Tehran. The presence of Iranian-backed militias in the bloody campaign in
Fallujah and Ramadi are visible signs of this interference.
The conclusion must be that this election, the first to take place in Iraq since the withdrawal of
American troops, has been significantly corrupted to the point where the result, when it finally
emerges, will almost certainly be fraudulent. There seems little doubt that hundreds of thousands of
people were deprived of their right to participate in the 30th
April elections due to violence and
intimidation, rendering this the most undemocratic election of the post-Saddam era.
The UN, US and EU should intervene and declare that this was not a free and fair election. They
must not stand back and wash their hands of this affair. The people of Iraq have suffered enough.
They need a democratic election that will provide them with a government that can restore freedom,
democracy, justice, human rights and women’s rights to Iraq. Four more years of corrupt dictatorship
by Maliki will be in no-one’s interest.
STRUAN STEVENSON, MEP
President of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq
