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| Iraq |
| Barzanis party accused of election fraud |
| 2009-07-28 |
| [Iran Press TV Latest] Iraq's Kurdish opposition has accused the regional President Massud Barzani's party of vote rigging in the weekend elections. Nusherwan Mustafa, the Leader of the Reformist Gorran (Change) list, brought the charges against Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) shortly after the post-election violence that left one person dead and 12 others wounded. The regional Kurdish Prime Minister, Nechervan Barzani condemned the post-election violence. "There was lots of forgery in Arbil and Dohuk (provinces) to change the result and to go against the will of the people," said Mustafa in a statement addressed to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the British, French and US envoys to Iraq. He called for pressure to be put on Barzani and the Iraqi electoral commission to 'stop the forged results'. Gorran has won 28 seats in the 111-seat regional Kurdish parliament overall, but claims to have won most of the votes in the region. His offices in Arbil were ransacked on Sunday by suspected KDP supporters as unofficial results started to filter out. Several Gorran members are defectors from the Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) which had formed a coalition with the KDP. Mustafa himself is a former PUK deputy leader -- who quit the party just months before the elections to protest at what they claim is the PUK's unwillingness to reform and fight corruption. |
| Posted by:Fred |