NAN

Iraq’s election commission said it had completed a manual recount of votes from a parliamentary election held in May, after deciding to cut the process short in Baghdad, state television said on Monday.

The commission canceled the recount in the remaining half of the capital, the broadcaster said.

Parliament had ordered the recount in June after a government report concluded there were widespread violations.

NAN reports that on June 30, officials said only suspect ballots flagged in formal complaints or official reports on fraud will be recounted.

In seven provinces where many complaints of fraud were made — Kirkuk, Sulaimaniya, Erbil, Dohuk, Nineveh, Salahuddin and Anbar — the recount will be conducted by the local electoral offices, Hamza said.

Those ballot boxes which had already been transferred to Baghdad will be recounted in the capital.

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The recount has been a politically fraught issue with the leaders of winning blocs embroiled in negotiations for weeks over the formation of the next government.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, whose electoral list came third in the poll marred by a historically low turnout, and the winner, cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, entered into an alliance, less than two weeks after Sadr announced a similar alliance with second-placed Iran ally Hadi al-Amiri’s bloc, thus bringing the top three blocs together.

The recount will exclude Baghdad where a storage site holding half of Baghdad’s ballot boxes went up in flames earlier this month in an incident Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi described as a “plot to harm the nation and its democracy”.

Overseas votes in Iran, Turkey, Britain, Lebanon, Jordan, the United States and Germany will also be recounted, Hamza said.

Earlier in June, the outgoing parliament passed a law mandating a nationwide manual recount of all votes, but the panel of judges now in charge of the process said it would only be conducted for those problematic ballots.