An Election in Iraq
- An Election in Iraq
The Iraqi elections of January 30 combined in one event the sublime and the ridiculous. Journalists in the field report the mood of the day as “magical”, with millions braving death to go to the polls in the Shiite and Kurdish regions. Yet security was so bad that candidates could not reveal their names until the day before the election, and most voters were reduced to voting for anonymous party lists. A three-day lockdown of the country, with all vehicular traffic forbidden by the occupying US military, prevented the guerrillas from attacking targets with car bombs. Even this measure did not stop guerrillas from attacking polling stations and other targets and killing dozens.
The election exacerbated sectarian tensions in Iraq, rather than paving the way to their resolution. The Sunni Arab areas did not vote in any numbers. Only two percent of Anbar Province, a Sunni Arab stronghold, came out to vote. Even in provinces such as Ninevah and Salahuddin, where more voted, the voters were disproportionately drawn from minorities such as Shiites, Kurds, Turkmen, and Chaldean Christians. Through poor planning, ballot boxes were not delivered to Ninevah province in time, and thousands of Christians and Turkmen were essentially prevented from voting.
Because the Sunni Arab population did not vote, either out of conviction that Iraq was militarily occupied, or because of fear of guerrilla violence, they have a tiny representation in the parliament. The Iraqi electoral system, put in place by a United Nations official and supported by the Bush Administration, involved the fielding of party or coalition lists. The election was held in the entire country, so that lists competed nationally. The tallying of votes was proportional, so a light Sunni Arab turnout essentially bestowed political benefits on the Kurds and Shiites, who did turn out to vote.
The main function of the transitional elected parliament is to craft a constitution. That the Sunni Arabs (who are twenty percent of the population and constituted the elite in the ancient regime) only have seventeen of 275 seats in parliament gives them an inadequate basis for competing politically in intra-parliamentary politics. Were the Sunni Arabs in general to decide that they had not been properly consulted in the drafting of the permanent constitution, they might well be able to thwart it. The constitution can be rejected by any three provinces if each votes against it.
The big winners of the election, both for the federal parliament and for provincial councils, were the religious Shiite parties. These were convinced by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, their spiritual guide, to form a single bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance. The UIA won 140 seats (148 with allies), or well over fifty percent of seats, and can therefore dominate all parliamentary processes requiring a majority vote. After the election, the UIA picked up eight votes from small independent groups, such as the radical Sadr movement and the Turkmen national front.
The religious revival in Iraq that began in the 1990s resulted in the marginalization of the secular-minded. The list of caretaker Prime Minister Iyad Allawi only received about fourteen percent of votes, despite his having been highlighted by the US and having had enormous advantages of incumbency.
The constituent parties of the UIA include most importantly the Dawa Party and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Both are fundamentalist Shiite parties that aspire to implement Islamic law as the law of the land. SCIRI in particular won eight of the 11 southern provinces. If decisions about personal status laws, criminal statutes, and commercial law are devolved on the provinces, SCIRI would be in an excellent position to implement them in the provinces it controls.
The Kurds also formed an internal alliance and won about 27 percent of seats, in excess of their proportion of the population. The Kurds are seeking substantial provincial autonomy and a redrawing of the 18 provinces so that the three mostly-Kurdish districts become a single, ethically-based province. They do not want Islamic law to be the law of the realm. They wish to add to their province the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, which is also claimed...
