Iraq's Pro-Iran Blocs Nix Poll Results After Loss

Pro-Iran groups said on Tuesday that they reject the results of Iraq's parliamentary elections after initial returns showed that their blocs suffered big losses, Jan Kuhlmann and Nehal El-Sherif reported for Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa).

Photo Insert: Head of the Fatah coalition, Hadi al-Amiri

The head of the Fatah coalition, Hadi al-Amiri, told the Shafaq News website: “We will not accept these fabricated results. “We will defend the votes of our candidates and our voters with full force.”

Al-Amiri's bloc won around 14 seats, a significant decline from the 47 seats it won in 2018, which made it the second-largest bloc in the previous parliament. Fatah and three other groups said in a joint statement earlier that they will contest the results.

The electoral commission said the door for complaints was open until Thursday.

Kataib Hezbollah militia, another pro-Iran group, described the election as "the biggest scam ... in modern history," the group's spokesman Abu Ali al-Askari said. Both the Fatah coalition and Kataib Hezbollah are part of the powerful paramilitary Hashd Shaabi umbrella group, also known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF).

Preliminary results showed that populist Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's list maintained its position as the largest bloc in parliament.

"The Sadrists were always predicted to be doing well due to their solid supporter base," Farhad Alaaldin, political analyst and head of the Iraq Advisory Council, said. They also benefited from a low turnout at 41 percent, he added.

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