Iraqi prime minister complains over rival's early poll lead
Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki complains to electoral body after interim count shows main rival ahead in parliamentary poll
Wednesday, 17, Mar 2010 02:46
By Matthew Champion.
Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki has lodged an official complaint with the country's electoral body after an interim poll showed his main rival ahead in parliamentary elections.
With 80 per cent of the regular Iraqi voted counted, former prime minister Ayad Allawi's cross-sectarian Iraqiya bloc maintained a narrow lead.
A spokesman for Mr al-Maliki's State of Law group, Ali al-Adeeb, said he was demanding a recount.
"There has been clear manipulation inside the election commission in the interests of a certain or a specific list," Mr al-Adeeb said.
This week's interim result does not include the 270,000-strong Iraqi diaspora or the special vote including military personnel, hospital patients or prisoners.
It put State of Law ahead in seven provinces including Baghdad, which elects one fifth of the 325-member Council of Representatives, which will choose a new government once seated.
Iraqiya leads in five predominantly Sunni Muslim provinces, including Nineveh, while a broad alliance of Kurdish parties holds the lead in three majority Kurdish provinces in the country's north-east and pro-Iranian Iraqi National Alliance, ahead in the remaining three.
Mr Allawi was technically Iraq's first post-Saddam Hussein prime minister, filling the post of interim prime minister for a year between May 2004 and April 2005.