400 appeals filed against Iraqi election results: Electoral body

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The number of appeals challenging the final results of Iraq’s recent parliamentary elections has reached 400, the electoral commission announced Thursday as the deadline for appeals ended.

Iraq held legislative elections on November 11. The final results were announced on Monday. The deadline for the political parties and candidates to appeal the results ended on Thursday.

Imad Jamil, head of the Independent High Electoral Commission’s (IHEC) media team, told Rudaw on Thursday that a total of 400 appeals have been filed against the results, including 150 in the morning alone.

The IHEC spokesperson Jumana al-Ghalai told Rudaw that the commission will review the appeals over a seven-working-day period before referring them to the election judicial panel, which is required "to resolve all appeals within ten days."

Following the panel’s decisions, the board of commissioners will submit the official results and the names of winning candidates to the Federal Supreme Court of Iraq for final ratification.

The vote was Iraq’s sixth parliamentary election since the fall of the Baath regime in 2003. Turnout exceeded 55 percent, surpassing expectations and well above the 41 percent recorded in the October 2021 elections.

According to the final results, caretaker Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani’s Reconstruction and Development Coalition (RDC) won 46 of the 329 seats in the legislature. The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), despite ranking second in total votes with more than 1.1 million votes, secured only 27 seats.

Although the KDP has praised the process, it has warned against alleged efforts to alter the results, adding that it will take a political response if the results are tampered with.

One of the political parties that has criticized the process is the Kurdistan Justice Group (Komal), whose officials claim that the results were already determined by powerful parties.