Ballot boxes are seen at a warehouse in Baghdad, Iraq May 18, 2018. (REUTERS)
BAGHDAD, May 31 (Xinhua) -- The Iraqi Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) said on Thursday that the results of May 12 parliamentary election can only be cancelled through the country's federal court.
"Cancelling the results of the election, under any circumstances, is for the federal court exclusively and not for the Council of Representatives (parliament)," Riyadh al-Badran, head of the electoral commission, said at a press conference in Baghdad.
"We respect the authority of the Council of Representatives, but the law is ruling, and has supremacy on the decision of the Iraqi Council of Representatives," Badran noted.
He confirmed that the electoral commission is waiting for the decision of the federal court over partial or full recount of the ballots.
A day earlier, Iraqi President Fuad Masoum sent a request to the federal court over the legitimacy of appointing a special committee on May 24 by the Council of Ministers, headed by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, in order to investigate allegations of fraud and irregularities about the election process and its results.
On May 28, the parliament approved the manual recounting of 10 percent of votes in the parliamentary election due to the alleged irregularities.
According to the parliament decision, if one quarter of the 10-percent votes are found with irregularity, all the votes across the country would be recounted.
Moreover, Badran told reporters that the appeals for the May 12 election ended on Thursday, and the electoral commission has received up to 1,875 complaints since May 19, the day the final results were announced.
The electoral judicial panel is looking into the complaints and this process will last 10 days, Badran said, adding that the panel decisions "will be binding for the electoral commission and the partners of the political process."
"The results of the parliamentary election will be reconsidered (after looking into complaints) before sending them to the federal court for approval, and then the results will become final," he said.
Many Iraqi parties, especially in the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan and the disputed areas, including Kirkuk Province, have complained about alleged irregularities and forgery in the parliamentary election.
The complaints put the electoral commission under pressure, as the electoral commission has not carried out manual recounting of many ballot boxes and depended only on the electronic count of the votes.
On May 12, millions of Iraqis went to 8,959 polling centers across the country to vote for their parliamentary representatives in the first general election after Iraq's historic victory over the Islamic State (IS) group last December.
