Nineveh Sunnis Warn of Charter Vote Fraud

"About 80 % of the Nineveh voters retuned "No" vote to the constitution," the Nineveh Shura Council said in a statement issued Saturday, October23 .

"This has motivated collaborators to delay vote results on claims of verifying what they say a high "Yes" vote in the southern provinces."

The Nineveh council stressed that such a fable pretext "substantiates leaked reports of massive fraud where ballots are being replaced and new ones with names of voters from Christian villages adjacent to Mosul are being added."

Iraq delayed the announcement of the October 15 vote results after the country's electoral commission said it was rechecking ballots.

The commission said Saturday that partial resulted showed81 . 5percent of voters in the Sunni Salaheddin province voted down the controversial document.

Under the rules for the referendum, the constitution fails if rejected by a two-third majority in any three of the 18 provinces and elections to a new parliament must be held.

There are majority Sunni populations in four provinces -- Al-Anbar, Diyala, Nineveh and Salaheddin -- and all reported strong voter turnout.

The majority of Sunnis are opposed to the charter, basically to the inclusion of a federalism article because they believe it will divide Iraq and exclude them from sharing in oil wealth, as reserves are concentrated mainly in the Kurdish north and Shiite south.

Int'l Inquiry

The Nineveh council called on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa, currently on a rare visit to Iraq, and international organizations to interfere to halt vote rigging in the Sunni province.

It also pressed for an international inquiry into the rigging charges.

"Otherwise, this could cause a Sunni boycott of the coming legislative elections, which is what the Shiite government wants."

The council urged both Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari to accept the vote results to spare Iraq infighting, holding them responsible for consequences of the vote irregularities.

The Iraqi Islamic Party, the country's main Sunni party, has also warned of massive fraud in the vote results in Nineveh.

Verification

Farid Ayyar, the spokesman for the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq (IECI), denied charges of counting irregularities in the Sunni province.

"This is part of the political propaganda between the different parties," he told IslamOnline.net Saturday.

Ayyar stressed that the commission was auditing results of the constitutional referendum.

"The IECI is verifying vote counting in the remaining five Iraqi province – mainly Sunni Al-Anbar and Nineveh, Kurdish Arbil and Shiite Basra and Babel -- and once finished, the results will be announced."

The IECI said Saturday that the provisional results showed several provinces approving the constitutional draft with more than90 % - including Najaf with96 %, and Karbala with90 %.

It said the approval rate in the capital Baghdad was78 %.

http://islamonline.net/English/News/2005-10/23/article02.shtml