Most disqualified Iraqi candidates failed to appeal

Almost all banned candidates for the next Iraqi election have lost their chance to appeal after failing to submit their cases properly to the election commission.

“Just 37 candidates presented their application to investigate their ban to (the election watchdog)” said the commission spokesman Khalid al-Shami.

“The rest presented their applications to the appeals commission directly, which means they lost their opportunity to review their ban,” he added.

Almost 500 candidates were banned from participation in the March 7 parliamentary elections for alleged ties to the former dictator Saddam Hussein’s Baath party.

Many of the candidates have been replaced by their parties and some have had their ban lifted, leaving 177 cases in the appeals process, Reuters reported.

But only 37 were lodged correctly, leaving the rest disqualified, Shami said.

The judges decided last week to lift a ban, arguing that they would examine their files after the March 7 polls and would “eliminate” them if they were found to be Baathists.

The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, however, branded the decision as “illegal,” calling on the judges to complete the appeals process by February 12, when official campaigning for the ballot begins.

Maliki insisted that to defer the appeals process until after the elections “represented a threat to the political process and to democracy.”