Iraqi PM Rejects Calls for Election Re-Run

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi rejected demands of any repeat of the May parliamentary election, warning that anyone who tried to sabotage the political process will be punished.

News ID: 70711

Date: 13 June 2018 - 15:45

TEHRAN (Defapress)-"The elections were held, there's no turning back. We have to move forward in order to form a new government," Abadi said on Tuesday, Al-Jazeera reported.

Abadi was referring to some calls by Iraqi MPs to cancel the election results and hold new polls after a fire broke out at Baghdad's largest storage site for ballot boxes on Sunday.

Abadi called the fire a deliberate act and said the attorney general would bring charges against those who are trying to undermine the political process.

He also pointed out that only the Supreme Federal Court could decide whether to re-run the vote, which was won by Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr's bloc.

On Monday, Sadr urged Iraqis to unite rather than squabble over a possible re-run of the election, in a message apparently meant to lower the political temperature after a ballot box storage depot caught fire.

An Iraqi court ordered the arrest of four people accused of setting fire to the storage site, according to the judiciary. Three of them were policemen and the fourth was an employee of the Independent High Elections Commission.

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