MANAMA, 4 December 2006 — An election monitor in Bahrain said yesterday that there was “circumstantial evidence” that pro-government candidates used fraud to win a majority of seats in Parliament.
The island kingdom’s incoming legislature is dominated by religious hard-liners.
Abdullah Al-Derazi of the Bahrain Human Rights Society said it appeared that at least three liberal opposition candidates in the kingdom were defeated by fraudulent means in Saturday’s second-round election.
Minister of Information Mohammed Abdel Ghaffar has downplayed previous reports of irregularities, saying the vote was largely fair and problems were minor.
The opposition, led by the Shiites, won just two of 11 runoff races, leaving them three seats short of a majority in Parliament’s elected lower house.
Al-Derazi, whose organization was tasked by the government to monitor the balloting in this Gulf island nation, said there were widespread reports of soldiers being ordered to vote for pro-government candidates, as well as some 8,000 “floating voters” without addresses who were reportedly sent to tip the balance in the tightest races. The questionable results came from 10 polling stations that opposition groups and election watchers alleged were set up to manipulate the outcome. Government officials have said the stations were set up as a convenience so voters would not have to travel to their home constituencies to vote.
Al-Derazi said three liberal opposition candidates who appeared en route to victory were defeated by thousands of late-emerging votes stemming from these “general” centers. “At least three liberal candidates lost because of these general centers, and because of the military” which, Al-Derazi said, had been told to vote for pro-government candidates. “There is circumstantial evidence. It’s very difficult to prove this, but the signs are there,” he said.
Two losing candidates, both from the country’s liberal alliance, have filed lawsuits seeking to overturn what they describe as fraudulent victories by their opponents. “The government did not want us to win,” said Munira Fakhro, a liberal woman candidate who lost to an Islamic candidate in last Saturday’s general election. “They don’t want to give up even a trace of their power.” The incoming Parliament counts just one liberal among 40 incoming members.
The Islamist-dominated body bears little resemblance to Bahrain’s traditionally progressive society, said former Education Minister Ali Fakhro, a cousin of the losing candidate. “A lot of people are asking how the liberals were defeated so badly. It just doesn’t make sense,” Ali Fakhro said. “People knew they would be a minority. But they didn’t expect an almost total absence.” The government banned international monitors from observing the vote, a move that Al-Derazi said also increased the likelihood of fraud.
Two members of the Shiite Al-Wefaq-led alliance won in the runoff, including one Sunni independent aligned with the opposition, for a total of 18 of 40 Parliament seats.
Al-Wefaq’s opponents, pro-government Sunnis, took nine seats during the runoff for a total of 22 in the Parliament.
In one hotly contested race, Al-Derazi said it was “statistically very unlikely” that Isa Abu Al-Fatah, a member of the pro-government Muslim Brotherhood, had won a legitimate victory over opposition candidate Abdulrahman Al-Nuaimi.
Preliminary results from the candidates’ home constituency on Saturday showed Al-Nuaimi leading by 741 votes. But late-emerging ballots from the general centers, where many soldiers and Bahrainis without addresses voted, went overwhelmingly to Al-Fatah, Al-Derazi said. The final results gave Al-Fatah 3,890 votes to Al-Nuaimi’s 3,484.
“This puts a question mark on these general centers,” Al-Derazi said. The general polling centers were equipped to accept ballots in any of 11 runoff elections.
Monitors and opposition leaders said there was no need for the centers on the tiny island, which is 3.5 times the size of Washington D.C. The fact that some of the general voting centers were close to each other also cast doubts on their legitimacy, Al-Derazi said.
“I’ve never heard of these kind of centers being used anywhere else,” he said. “They are unnecessary. They should have been abolished. We said this before the election.”
Officials reported high turnout during Saturday’s runoff, the second time in two weeks that voters cast ballots in the country’s third-ever elections.
