Independent High Electoral Commission Meeting in Belgium

From left to right:

Mr. Ahmed Hisham Sabah, Consul at the Iraqi Embassy in Brussels,

Mr. Wail El-Waili, Head of the IHEC Office in Den Haag, The Netherlands,

Dr. Hassan Aydinli, ITF EU Representative

28th February 2010 -Antwerp, Belgium

The office of the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) in Holland organised a meeting in Antwerp (Belgium) on 28th February 2010 to inform the Iraqis living in Belgium about the upcoming Iraqi Parliamentary election.

The meeting was attended by the representatives of several political organizations as well as members of civil society organizations.

Dr. Hassan Aydinli, ITF EU Representative had been invited to attend this meeting as the representative of the Iraqi Turkmens.

During the meeting which lasted three hours, several pertinent questions were raised by the participants.

Dr. Hassan Aydinli suggested to the IHEC representatives and to the representative of the Iraqi Embassy that they should either organise the transport of the Iraqis living in Belgium who wish to cast their votes to the polling station in Utrecht (The Netherlands) or pay their train ticket from Brussels to Utrecht.

Dr. Hassan Aydinli strongly recommended that in future Iraq should adopt the same practice as all the other countries with regards to the voting of their citizens living abroad, i.e.:

Iraqis living outside Iraq who wish to vote must be able to do so at the Iraqi Embassy or General Consulate in the country where they live and reside and they should not have to travel to another foreign country to cast their vote.