Six dissatisfied Kurdish parties support Iraq's supreme court rule to manual election recount

Six political parties from the Kurdistan Region announce that they respect Iraq's federal supreme court decision of parliament‌s decision to manually recount votes cast in May 12 election and the annulment of IDP, diasporas, and advance votes conditionally. 

In the joint statement published on Thursday, the six parties state that they by approving the bill by Iraq's top court they achieve their efforts and objects to hold a nationwide manual recount.

"We respect all court's rule on Iraqi parliament bill law to manual election recount as well as to annulment of IDP, diasporas and advance voting if there are no fraud evidence fins," the statement reads.
 
The Change Movement (Gorran),the Coalition for Democracy and Justice (CDJ), Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU), the Islamic Group of Kurdistan (Komal), the Communist Party of Kurdistan, and the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan (IKM), declares that they have all protested May 12 election results early and accused the ruling parties of rigging the election outcome.

“We declare our support and waiting for next steps taken by the judges to monitor manual recount process of the election held on May 12 in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region,” the six parties stated on Thursday.

Iraq's top court upheld on Thursday a law mandating a nationwide recount of votes in a May parliamentary election but ruled that the cancellation of overseas, displaced, and advance ballots was unconstitutional.

Parliament, which had mandated the recount after a government report found serious violations had taken place, had also canceled some results such as overseas and displaced votes by amending the election law this month.

The verdict from the Supreme Federal Court confirms the recount process, which was opposed by the elections commission and some parties who made significant gains in the election.

“The Supreme Federal Court finds that parliaments decision was to organize the electoral process and restore voter confidence in the electoral process; it was within parliaments constitutional rights and does not contradict the constitution,” said Chief Justice Medhat al-Mahmoud