Saturday, 25 August 2012 12:54

Shafaq News / The Parliament revealed on Saturday that there is pressure on the parliament by the United Nations to speed up legislating laws related to elections.

The parliaments’ decision maker, MP , Mohammed al-Khalidi said in an interview with “Shafaq News”, that “The UN mission in Iraq is putting pressure on the parliament to speed up legislating elections laws and the selecting the commission”, adding that “ the problem in the law lies in the paragraph of distributing votes and statistics paragraph. “

Choosing the members of the Commissioners Board of the Electoral Commission has led to increase the differences among the political blocs.

Some believe on the need to increase the number of members in accordance with the consensus while others see from the political blocs that the distribution of the Election Commission office on the blocs is considered as a “violation” of the Commission Law and as it deprives the Commission from its independence.

The Parliament approved recently the extension of the work of the Electoral Commission for elections for 35 days.

Khalidi noted that , “The Ministry of Planning has no accurate statistics regarding citizens aged over 18 years old and above, as it does not have accurate statistics regarding areas , neighborhoods and districts because there are elections for the provincial councils , districts and areas.”

“This problem can be solved by involving the Ministry of Commerce on the subject with planning to give the data to the Commission,” he added.

It is worth mentioning that the last census in Iraq was in 1997, while the census that was intended to take place after 2003 has been delayed more than once, as observers note currently that it is difficult to know the current ethnic and sectarian distribution in Iraq, because of the war, security chaos circumstances, massive migration and demographic change areas, as well as many residents did not enter in the calculation of ration cards.

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