BAGHDAD: Iraq’s outgoing parliament speaker Salim al-Jabouri said on Sunday that a May 12 parliamentary election should be repeated after a storage site housing ballot boxes in Baghdad caught on fire earlier in the day.
The ballot boxes are part of a manual recount of votes from the May parliamentary election, mandated in a law passed on Wednesday.
“The crime of burning ballot box storage warehouses in the Rusafa area is a deliberate act, a planned crime, aimed at hiding instances of fraud and manipulation of votes, lying to the Iraqi people and changing their will and choices,” Jabouri said in a statement.
“We call for the election to be repeated,” added Jabouri, who lost his seat in the election. He called for those responsible to be brought to justice by the security forces.
