By: Brian Binley MP
cornerstonegroup.wordpress.com, March 30, 2010
The outcome of the Iraqi elections is being challenged by almost everybody. Prime Minister Al-Maliki initially claimed the election was free and fair, but has now decided that there has, after all, been widespread cheating. Perhaps this is because his main challenger, former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, did so well. Both Al-Maliki and Allawi won around 90 seats each in the 325 seat parliament.
Al-Maliki should be believed when he says that there has been widespread cheating. He ordered most of it! Scottish Tory MEP Struan Stevenson has claimed that after he published an email address and invited Iraqis to contact him with evidence of fraud, he received hundreds of letters and emails from inside Iraq and elsewhere. Stevenson, who heads the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq, tried to take a team of election observers to Iraq but was refused permission on security grounds. Instead he used the internet as an ad hoc election observation unit. The results were deeply concerning.
The Iranian regime, forever keen to meddle in Iraq’s affairs,  moved heaven and earth to try to stop the non-sectarian, secularist and nationalist parties from winning seats. They were behind the illegal banning of some 500 candidates from standing in the elections on trumped up charges that they were sympathetic to the former Baathist regime. In fact the one thing most of the banned candidates had in common was their vigorous opposition to Iranian meddling in Iraq’s internal affairs! Key political figures from the secularist camp were arrested. Large amounts of Iranian cash was allegedly distributed to buy votes and in one case it was said that pistols were purchased and handed out to villagers in return for their pledges of support.
A senior member of Al-Maliki’s administration apparently travelled to Brussels to brief Stevenson following the vote, so concerned was he by the extent of corruption and cheating which took place in the supposedly free and fair election.