Good turnout for OCV, IOM

Some 265,148 expatriate Iraqis, representing 93.6 percent of registered Iraqi voters in 14 countries around the world went to the polls in Iraq's Transitional National Assembly Election between 29-31 January, through the International Organization for Migration's (IOM) Out-of-Country Voting (OCV) Programme. In Syria, home to an estimated 400,000 Iraqis, more than 15,000 registered to vote. Ten km outside the Syrian capital, the head of the OCV in Syria, Luis Martinez Betanzos, told IRIN that over 90 percent of Iraqis who registered showed up and voted over the three day voting period. Betanzo was speaking at a press conference on Monday inside the building where votes are being counted in the ballot to elect a 275-seat transitional national assembly. He declined, however, to give an accurate voting figure because of restrictions imposed by the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq (IECI) in Baghdad. Counting began at 8:00 am local time (6:00 am GMT) on Monday, under the watchful eyes of international and Syrian parliamentary observers and over 100 journalists who were accredited by the OCV. Betanzos stressed that there were no threats or incidents of forgery during the whole process, which went smoothly, under close coordination with the Syrian Ministry of the Interior. He thanked the Syrian government again for their full cooperation. "Without this Iraqis could never have had a chance to participate in their first real democratic elections." The polling centres were only open in the capital, Damascus and not in the north of the country where many Iraqis are said to be residing. Betanzos attributed this to "the tight, short, period between signing the Memorandum of Understanding with the Syrian government on 2 January and opening the registration period on 17 January. The counting process, which is expected to take a few days, started slowly to allow transparent observation and monitoring. Counting will be conducted by trained Iraqi staff in Syria, as is the case in the 13 other host countries. Ballots from each station have been centralised in 34 counting centres set up in the cities around the world with OCV facilities. The largest population of expatriate voters is in Iran, where more than 56,000 Iraqis voted, some 92 percent of those registered. (For full details of turnout in Iraq OCV programme please go to: www.iraqocv.org). Counting of votes inside Iraq, where an estimated eight million people out of 14 million eligible voters cast ballots, is expected to take about 10 days. Iraqis in Damascus were happy when all 10 polling stations closed without incident. At the al-Mezza centre, where staff gathered to celebrate the event with cakes and tea, Omar Alawi, Centre Manager, told IRIN: "The will of life has won over the desire of death," referring to suicide bombings that took place in Iraq on election day. Alawi, an enthusiastic Iraqi who suffered under Saddam Hussein, thanked all those who worked in the OCV program in Syria for allowing Iraqis their first opportunity to "vote for life and build the new bright Iraq."