The Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Iraq, Jeanine Plasschaert, said Tuesday that the agency will work not to repeat the experience of the 2018 elections.
"It is essential that these elections are different from the elections in 2018,” she said in a press conference held in Baghdad, adding that five weeks ago, she stated that technical preparations were progressing according to plan. “At the time, some concerns still had to be addressed to safeguard the accuracy of the election results.”
According to Plasschaert, the UN will not endorse elections that are not credible and do not consider them fair and lack transparency, stressing that voters should freely participate in the polls and cast their votes.
During the Oct. 10 elections, the UN will be present in five governorates: Baghdad, Kirkuk, Erbil, Mosul, and Diyala.
There will be 130 international experts monitoring the polls, along with 600 support staff. To prevent abuse of electronic voter cards, they will be disabled for 72 hours after a person votes to avoid double voting, she said.
For his part, Brigadier Ghaleb al-Attiyah, spokesman for the Supreme Security Committee for Elections in Iraq, said that security forces started deploying near polling stations in preparation for Election Day.
“Security agencies have started securing the 8,273 polling stations in Baghdad and other governorates,” he said.
