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Bahraini Shia Muslim party wins 18 seats in vote

BahrainThe opposition has won nearly half of the parliamentary seats in the Saturday’s elections in the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain, the electoral commission says.

According to the Shiite News Correspondent,’The opposition has won nearly half of the parliamentary seats in the Saturday’s elections in the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain, the electoral commission says.

Election authorities said on Sunday that Bahrain’s main Shia opposition group, the Islamic National Accord Association (INAA), won 18 of the parliament’s 40 seats.

The 18 candidates of INAA were elected in the first round of the legislative polls, electoral commission chairman Abdullah al-Buainain told AFP.

Nine seats remain up for grabs in the second round of voting which is to take place on October 30, he went on to say.

Earlier, the opposition had criticized the process, saying Shia voters had been turned away from polling booths. The head of the largest Shia bloc lodged allegations of irregularities just less than an hour before voting closed.

Manama rejects the charges, amid concerns that even small numbers of votes could influence the results in a country with fewer than 319,000 eligible voters.

Head of the al-Wefaq party Sheik Ali Salman said that at least 890 voters were turned away from polling stations in mostly Shia areas because their names were not on electoral lists.

“This is not the full number,” Salman said at a news conference. “We expect it to be higher.”

Nabeel Rajab, the director of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, said the government intended to make sure the country’s Shia majority would not gain power.

Hundreds of Shia people have been arrested since August, and at least 23 top opposition figures have been charged with plotting against Bahrain’s Sunni-dominated government.

Bahrain authorities have not allowed international election monitors, adding to worries among Shias of possible fraud and vote rigging.

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