by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Iraqi parliament
Baghdad : The Iraqi parliament on Monday approved manual recounting of 10 per cent of votes in the May 12 parliamentary election amid allegations of fraud, forgery and irregularities.
With the attendance of 165 lawmakers at the emergency session, the parliament passed a draft bill to recount 10 percent of the votes, Xinhua reported.
And if one quarter of the 10-percent votes are found with irregularity, the recounting would be carried out for all the votes across the country, said a statement of the parliament.
The decision will also cancel the votes of the polling centres outside Iraq if irregularities were found, as well as the results of the “conditional voting” in the refugee camps, according to the statement.
The “conditional voters” refer to those who showed any IDs to prove their Iraqi citizenship instead of valid voting cards.
In addition, recounting of the votes at the polling stations in the ethnically-mixed city of Kirkuk will be held, as well as for some polling stations that were already cancelled by the electoral commission in the disputed areas claimed by both Baghdad central government and the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.
On May 19, the Iraqi Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) announced the final results of the parliamentary election, which showed that the al-Sa’iroon Coalition, led by Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, was the front-runner by winning 54 of the 329 parliament seats.
The al-Fath Coalition, led by Hadi al-Ameri, came in the second place with 47 seats, while the al-Nasr Coalition, led by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, came in third with 42 seats. The State of Law Coalition, headed by Vice President and former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, garnered 25 seats.
Many Iraqi parties, especially in the Kurdistan region and the disputed areas including Kirkuk province, have complained about irregularities and forgery in the parliamentary election.
The complaints put the electoral commission under pressure, as it has not carried out manual recounting of many ballot boxes and depended only on the electronic counting of the votes.
Earlier, Riyadh al-Badran, head of the electoral commission, told a press conference “there is no justification for a manual recount yet,” despite many complaints about voter fraud.
On May 17, UN Special Envoy to Iraq Jan Kubis issued a statement, calling on the IHEC to carry out an immediate and thorough investigation into all complaints concerning the election.
The Iraqi parliament also called on May 19 for measures to instill confidence in the election process after receiving complaints from political entities about alleged irregularities.
On May 24, the Iraqi Council of Ministers (cabinet) met with top judicial and intelligence officials and the IHEC’s security committee to discuss immunity of the electronic devices used in casting and counting the votes for the first time in the Iraqi election, a government statement said.
The cabinet appointed a special committee to investigate the allegations, whose results would be handed to the council of ministers, high judicial council and the federal court, according to the statement.
On May 12, Iraq held the first parliamentary election since defeating the Islamic State (IS) militant group in last December.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday announced ex-gratia payment of Rs 10 lakh to the next of kin of each of 39 Indians who were killed at Mosul in Iraq, an official release said.
The mortal remains of 38 Indians, killed by the Islamic State terror group in Iraq’s Mosul in 2014, were brought to Amritsar in a special IAF aircraft on Monday.
Minister of State for External Affairs V.K. Singh accompanied the mortal remains to Amritsar from Mosul.
Although 39 Indians were killed as the Islamic State took over Mosul, the mortal remains of only 38 of them could be brought back as identification of one body is still pending.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday said the Modi government had for years lied about the fate of 39 Indians killed in Iraq and was now diverting public attention from it by alleging that his party had links with a firm accused of misusing personal data of Facebook users.
“Problem: 39 Indians dead; Government on the mat, caught lying. Solution: Invent story on Congress and data theft. Result: Media networks bite bait; 39 Indians vanish from radar. Problem solved,” Gandhi said in a tweet.
Gandhi’s remarks came a day after Information and Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad accused the Congress of compromising national security by roping in political data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica to run its 2019 election campaign.
The Minister alleged that the firm had been found involved in data manipulation and warned that any attempt to misuse social media to influence India’s electoral process would not be tolerated.
Congress Communications Incharge Randeep Singh Surjewala also attacked the government, accusing it of deceiving the families of those dead in Iraq and the nation.
“Another lie, another spin exposed as truth unravels. All 39 Indians had died years ago as the evidence and witnesses suggested and corroborated now by Martyrs Foundation. Yet Modi government lied, duped and deceived the families and the Nation,” Surjewala tweeted.
He accused the government of not paying compensation to the families of those killed.
“Families ask questions – 1. Why did Modi government and Sushmaji mislead them for 4 years? 2. Why does the government not reveal the date of death? 3. What evidence did the EAM have of them being alive for all these years? 4. Why is government not agreeable to compensating the families?” he asked.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : Thirty-nine Indians kidnapped by the Islamic State (IS) terror group in Iraq’s Mosul in 2014 are dead, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said on Tuesday.
The minister confirmed the deaths in the Rajya Sabha and said the mortal remains will be brought back to India by Union Minister of State for External Affairs V.K. Singh.
“General V.K. Singh will go to Iraq to bring back the mortal remains of the Indians killed in Iraq. The plane carrying the mortal remains will first reach Amritsar, then Patna and then go to Kolkata,” Sushma Swaraj said.
She said the bodies were spotted using deep penetration radar and were exhumed from mass graves.
Their identities were confirmed by DNA tests.
“The bodies were brought to Baghdad for DNA testing. The DNA of 38 Indians have been matched.
“For verification of the bodies, DNA samples of their relatives were sent there. Four state governments — Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal and Bihar — were involved in the process,” the minister said.
The victims — 31 from Punjab, four from Himachal Pradesh and four from Bihar and West Bengal — were construction workers and were employed by an Iraqi company in Mosul.
They were taken hostage when the IS took control of Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq. The workers were trying to leave Mosul when they were taken hostage.
Sushma Swaraj also dismissed claims of Harjeet Massi, one of them who escaped from Mosul.
“He was not willing to tell me how he escaped,” she said.
The minister said that she had concrete evidence that he was lying.
Massi had escaped along with Bangladeshis with the help of a caterer with a fake name ‘Ali’, she said.
She said the details were revealed to her by Massi’s employer and the caterer who helped him.
In July 2017, Sushma Swaraj had said that she would not declare the 39 Indians dead without concrete proof or evidence.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Washington : The World Bank and the government of Iraq signed two projects worth $510 million on Wednesday, to help the Iraqi people improve their living conditions, as well as to enhance water supplies and create more jobs.
The two projects, along with the ongoing $750 million Emergency Operation for Development Project and other planned commitments, will increase the World Bank’s total commitment to Iraq to $4.7 billion, compared to $600 million four years ago, the World Bank said in a statement.
It indicated that Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi and World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim attended the signing ceremony for the two projects, which took place on the sidelines of the Iraq Reconstruction Conference held in Kuwait on February 12-14.
The Group affirmed that its increased commitment will help support the immediate restoration of education and health services, rebuilding important roads and bridges as well as rehabilitation of electricity and water systems. It noted that the ongoing emergency reconstruction projects have already created thousands of jobs for Iraqis, expecting that the new projects will create millions more.
The Bank also stressed that its commitment to scaling up support for Iraq reconstruction and development subject to availability of resources. In addition to the financial support, the Group has actively engaged with the Iraqi government through providing technical assistance for Iraq’s recovery and laying the foundation for private sector investments in the country, said the statement.
—AB/UNA-OIC
