Out of Country Voting Fiasco

Iraqi Association press release 18 March 2010

“Election is often viewed as a crucial peace-building tool in post-conflict countries. This is the third time for expat Iraqis in Britain to participate in the Iraqi election, but the process was flawed and thousands of our community members were deprived to vote, or their ballot papers were destroyed,” said Jabbar Hasan, of Iraqi Association in Hammersmith, London.

The post-conflict elections can jump-start the democratisation process by offering all citizens the opportunity to be involved, and their involvement is critical to giving elected Parliament the legitimacy they need to govern in often difficult circumstances. In Britain, the voting was organised by the Independent High Electoral Commission of Iraq (IHEC) earlier this month on 5th, 6th and 7th March, it was held in London, Manchester and Birmingham. The first Out of Country Voting of 2005 was organised by the International Organization for Migration, it is worth to say that more expat Iraqis voted in 2005 than this time.

The incompetence and poor judgements of IHEC led to unnecessary terrible fiasco here, and concern of the community is growing, that IHEC set restrictive and confused eligibility criteria and did not set dates for registration, but voting process only, and voters’ personal data have been tampered with.

“We had a humpty dumpty process of out of country voting, despite the unpleasant method, we heard today over 40% of the total U.K casting votes were cancelled. We need explanation that despite available resources, why the IHEC has miserably failed in its task to organise the Out of Country Voting.” said Jabar Hasan