Tech 4 Peace
What is the truth about the electoral poster circulating as belonging to a female candidate in the Iraqi elections?
Several pages on social media platforms circulated a photo of an electoral campaign for a candidate called "Shaimaa al-Kaabi" for the "Iraq Alliance", electoral district No. 6 in sequence 33, and the photo has the phrase "Unity, Freedom, Socialism".
The truth:
1- When reviewing the lists of candidates approved by the Independent High Electoral Commission recently to participate in the upcoming parliamentary elections, which were published by the Iraqi News Agency, we did not find any female candidate called “Shaimaa Al-Kaabi” among the names of the candidates, and we also did not find any electoral list or coalition called “Iraq Alliance," among the participants. Click here.
But when we searched for the name of the "Iraq Alliance", we found that the "Iraq Alliance" was a participant in the 2014 parliamentary elections, but it does not exist in the next elections that are scheduled to be held on the tenth of October of this year.
2- Since the circulated photo shows that “the electoral district is the sixth”, we searched for all the candidates in electoral district No. 6 in each governorate, and we did not find any woman with such a name as a candidate for the electoral district No. 6, which proves that the circulated photo is fake and does not belong to any real electoral campaign.
Noting that with the approaching time of the next parliamentary elections in Iraq, which is scheduled to be held on October 10, 2021.
Tech for Peace team monitored widespread slander and ridicule campaigns on social media platforms that affected former or current candidates, and even a poster of electoral advertisement for one of the candidates from another country that were circulated as being in Iraq, where our team revealed the truth of this fabricated news.
Among them, we mention the circulation of an electoral advertisements poster for several politicals captioned with a text “candidate themselves for elections at the request of the Messenger (peace be upon him) or at the request of Fatimah al-Zahra (peace be upon her) or at the request of Abu Bakr and Omar (may God be pleased with him)”.
But when we checked all these posters, we found that they are old, go back to the previous parliamentary elections in 2018, and they were modified by adding the previously mentioned candidacy request phrases, as the original photos don't contain it. Click here, here, and here.
A video clip was also circulated showing one of the female candidates meeting with several sheiks as being a new candidate for the upcoming elections, but when checking the video, it was found that it is old, goes back to the previous elections as well.
Moreover, it wasn't only fabricated photos or videos of former Iraqi candidates circulating as belonging to the electoral campaigns of the candidates for the upcoming elections, but also many Iraqi pages and accounts on social media platforms recently published a photo showing canned chicken with a poster of electoral advertisement for a candidate as an electoral candidate. But by searching we found that it belongs to a person called "Abdel-Malek Al-Amrawi," who is one of the candidates for the elections that took place last June in Algeria, Click here.
