Iraq : Al-Sadr confirms his quest to build alliances to form a government and the Shiite forces' coordination rejects the election results

Preliminary results published by the official Iraqi News Agency immediately after the elections last Sunday, and the Electoral Commission relinquished its responsibility for them, showed that the Sadrist bloc led with 73 seats out of 329, and the “Taqaddam” bloc led by the dissolved Parliament Speaker Muhammad al-Halbousi came second with 38 seats, and in third place. The State of Law bloc led by former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki came with 37 seats.

The leader of the Sadrist movement, Muqtada al-Sadr, announced that he would seek to build national alliances to form a government, after the Independent High Electoral Commission announced the complete preliminary results of the parliamentary elections, while the Shiite forces' coordination rejected the announced results.

In a statement published by his media office late on Saturday evening, Al-Sadr was quick to announce his acceptance of the results and decisions of the High Elections Commission, saying that his current seeks to form a service-oriented national government, not sectarian or ethnic, in accordance with the aspirations of the Iraqi people.

He considered that the preliminary results show that the Sadrist bloc (the "Sairoon" alliance) is the largest electoral and popular bloc, which requires it to seek to build alliances under the tent of reform, to form a service-oriented and honest government.

The preliminary unofficial results published by the Iraqi News Agency after the elections last Sunday showed the Sadrist movement topping the list with 73 seats out of 329 in Parliament, and the list of winning candidates published by the Electoral Commission yesterday evening confirmed this trend.

In a tweet on Twitter that included a statement on the most important thing he said the world expected from the Sadrist movement taking over as prime minister, al-Sadr made it clear that Washington should conduct a serious and effective dialogue regarding the survival of its forces, camps, planes, battleships and interventions in Iraq, calling on the United States to deal with Iraq as a state. With a fully sovereign state.

He considered that the Iraqi people's revolutions and demonstrations are an internal affair and a matter that does not concern the United States, either from near or from afar, calling on it to distance Iraq from its regional conflicts, whatever they may be.

In his statement, Al-Sadr addressed several points. He considered that in the event that they are not achieved, the United States is a country hostile to Iraq and does not want its independence, sovereignty and stability, as he put it.

Complete results

Muqtada al-Sadr's statement comes shortly after the Electoral Commission announced the complete preliminary results of the legislative elections and published the names of the winning candidates, without specifying the number of seats won by the winning political forces in the ballot.

The commission said - in a press conference that was repeatedly postponed - that the counting and sorting of all electoral stations had been completed, confirming the complete conformity between the electronic count and the manual count for stations and boxes that were manually recounted.

She indicated that the preliminary results were published on her website, and confirmed that the participation rate had risen to 43% from 41% that had been previously announced, noting that more than 9.6 million Iraqi voters cast their votes in these early parliamentary elections.

She added that these results are preliminary and can be challenged, and that she is committed to standing at the same distance from all candidates and political entities, stressing that her work was not affected by what she described as political conflicts.

The Commission also confirmed that it had received more than 1,300 appeals, and that all preliminary appeals did not affect the election result, explaining that the appeals door would be opened again in the completed results as preliminary results.

Press conference of the Independent High Electoral Commission in IraqThe Electoral Commission announced that the turnout in the elections rose to 43%.

No changes

Al-Jazeera correspondent in Baghdad learned that the results - after the counting and sorting operations were completed and the appeals examined - did not result in significant changes in the relative weights of the political blocs and the parliamentary seats they obtained.

Al-Jazeera correspondent Abdel-Fattah Fayed indicated that the appeals against the completed preliminary results will be opened from today, Sunday, for a period of 3 days, provided that the Commission will, during the next ten days, examine these appeals until they become semi-final and are referred to the Federal Court.

According to the preliminary results published by the official news agency immediately after the elections last Sunday, and the commission renounced its responsibility for them, the Sadrist bloc topped the results with 73 seats out of 329, while the "Progress" bloc led by the dissolved Parliament Speaker Muhammad al-Halbousi won 38 seats, and ranked third. The State of Law bloc led by former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was replaced with 37 seats.

The Kurdistan Democratic Party won 32 seats, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan won 15 seats, the "Azm" coalition led by Khamis al-Khanjar won 20 seats, and the "Al-Fateh" coalition won 14 seats.

At that time, forces close to Iran quickly questioned the results, after losing many seats compared to the previous elections in 2018.

Reject results

Meanwhile, the coordinating framework of the Shiite forces in Iraq announced its complete rejection of the results of the Electoral Commission, after its insistence on what it called the contested results.

In a statement published prior to the press conference of the Electoral Commission, and which included a confirmation of his position, which he expressed a few days ago, the framework held the commission fully responsible for what he called the failure of the electoral process in Iraq.

The coordinating framework considered that the mismanagement of the election file would negatively affect the democratic process and societal harmony, expressing his hope that the Electoral Commission would correct the violations it committed during and after the counting of votes and the announcement of the results.

For its part, the Iraqi National Civilian Front described the legislative elections as invalid, and the leader of the front, Iyad Allawi, called for holding a national dialogue conference to find solutions to the problems resulting from the elections, warning that matters would reach the point of hostility.

In a press conference for the front, Allawi stressed that his decision to boycott the elections was due to reasons ranging from financial corruption to foreign influence and uncontrolled weapons, as he put it.

Political forces, most notably the "Al-Fateh Alliance" led by Hadi al-Amiri, had warned that proceeding with the announced results of the elections "threatens and jeopardizes civil peace in the country," which raised fears of a possible outbreak of internal fighting in the country.

Iraqi officials - including President Barham Salih, and leaders of political forces, including Muqtada al-Sadr - called for avoiding escalation, in light of some political forces' questioning of the integrity of the elections.

Alert

On the other hand, AJ NEWS correspondent Abdel-Fattah Fayed reported that Baghdad witnessed a large-scale security deployment on Saturday, in anticipation of the announcement of the preliminary results of the elections.

Fayed said that there was a fear of uncalculated reactions, especially in light of the polarization between the Iraqi and political forces and blocs.

The Chief of Staff of the Iraqi Army, Lieutenant-General Abdul-Amir Yarallah, had said that all security forces had entered a state of readiness and readiness, in anticipation of any emergency when the results appeared.

Yarallah added - in a press conference held in the city of Samarra in Salah al-Din Governorate (175 km north of Baghdad) - that the security forces are ready to secure the situation after the announcement of the results of the legislative elections.

In turn, Anadolu Agency quoted a security source as saying that the Iraqi authorities deployed large numbers of army and police forces in central Baghdad, in anticipation of any emergency prior to the announcement of the final results of the elections.

The source added that the security deployment was concentrated at the entrances and surroundings of the Green Zone, where the government, parliament and diplomatic missions are located.

The early elections were held a year earlier than they were scheduled, after widespread protests in Iraq starting in early October 2019, which lasted for more than a year, and overthrew the previous government headed by Adel Abdul-Mahdi in late 2019.