[Previous entry: "Spy Court Judge Quits In Protest"] [Next entry: "Bolivia's Morales brands Bush a "terrorist""]

12/22/2005:

"Sunni and secular parties seek Iraq election rerun"

A broad-based group of Sunni and secular parties called yesterday for a rerun of last week's Iraqi elections, claiming the ruling party in the country had engaged in blatant fraud. "We want a new election commission and we're going to ask the United Nations to help organise it," Thair al-Naqeeb, the spokesman for Ayad Allawi, the head of the Iraqi National List, told the Guardian last night.
"We're going to ask for a new government to rule while the election is prepared. If our demands are not met, we will take further steps and create a lot of protest," he added.

Mr Allawi was Washington's favourite to become prime minister in the new four-year parliament. His list includes liberals, communists, and representatives of several ethnic minorities, as well as secular Sunnis and Shias. It is considered to be the most balanced of any group in last week's poll and is firmly opposed to religion interfering in politics.

But preliminary results announced this week gave it a worse score than it expected, and it will probably end up with barely half the 40 seats it has in the current parliament.
guardian.co.uk

Kurdistan: Voting Irregularities Reported in Kurdish Areas