You're Voting for Whom?

Rod Nordland
Newsweek
10 December 2004

Dec. 9 - The much-anticipated Shiite list of candidates for the forthcoming elections in Iraq was presented today_in partial anonymity and peculiar secrecy. This is the slate of candidates who will almost certainly win elections if they take place on schedule next Jan. 30. And in a few days it will have to begin campaigning.

The grouping of 228 candidates, a coalition running together as the newly formed United Iraqi Alliance, today formally filed for a place on the ballot at the Baghdad offices of the Independent Elections Commission for Iraq and then held a press conference at which representatives of the group refused to reveal the names of those on their list, or even who was at its head. A media spokesman for the IECI also refused to reveal the contents of the Shiite list. The head of the elections commission, Adel Hindawi, reached by telephone, said, "I haven't seen the list, and I don't know anything about it."

The United Iraqi Alliance list will presumably eventually become public, when the Dec. 15 deadline for candidates to file passes and campaigning begins_assuming that candidates do not contemplate campaigning in secrecy. The secrecy is apparently motivated by security concerns for some of those on the list, and by horse-trading still going on among members of the coalition over what positions they'll get in the new government. Some of the names on the list have come out, but the most stunning thing about it is who is left out: notably, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and his Iraqi National Accord party. This makes it almost impossible for Allawi to be re-elected prime minister, and could even mean he would not win a seat in the National Assembly.

Is this any way to run an election? Nothing about preparations for Iraq's first free poll has been easy. In a third of the country's provinces, nearly all of the country's Sunni Triangle, it's been nearly impossible to conduct voter registration. Sunnis, who are only 20 percent of the population but long ruled the country, have called for a delay in the elections until security conditions improve. Most of their leading organizations have called for a boycott of the vote; others have insisted on a delay of six months. Even Allawi, a secular Shia from an exile party, has suggested that the poll be conducted over a period of many days or weeks, to keep lines shorter and make the risk of attack less_a proposal the elections commission rejected today. Elections-commission officials have insisted that security at polling places will be provided only by the Iraqi police and National Guard_not by American or Coalition troops, so as not to intimidate voters or create the impression that the poll isn't independent. But Iraqi security forces have been reeling from one attack after another on their police stations and checkpoints, on individuals at home and on the highways. Even Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations diplomat who crafted the deal on an interim government to prepare these elections, has recently said he thinks the atmosphere is too violent for credible elections to take place.

The Shia, however, are having none of that_and American authorities seem determined to support their insistence that elections take place on schedule, no matter what. "Our operating assumption is that these elections will go forward," said U.S. ambassador John Negroponte at a recent lunch with a small group of American journalists in the former palace that is now the American embassy. Anti-election Sunnis, he suggested, still have plenty of time to change their minds and participate. "Do they really want to opt out of a constitutional convention that sets the political future of the country? Or do they want a seat at the table?" And a few prominent Sunnis have come out for elections, most notably the interim president, Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawer. Sunni leader Adnan Pachachi, an elder statesman with close ties to the Americans and Brahimi, was the architect of an abortive attempt at delaying the polls_but when that fell through, he was among the first to register his slate's candidacy. And despite the problems with voter-registration sites, the system set up by the U.N. under a small team led by veteran elections troubleshooter Carlos Valenzuela has a built-in solution. Most of Iraq's voters are passively registered, and only have to go to the centers if there is something wrong with their names on the voting rolls. The voting rolls are correlated with ration cards, which all Iraqi families have to enable them to get monthly supplies of donated food_ensuring that everyone will know if their registration is in order.

At the press conference announcing the list, organizers gave the names of the major parties that make up their coalition, although not the names of all the individuals on the list. They include the leading Shia parties, Hizbullah, the Supreme Commission for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Dawa Party. In addition, the list included nonpoliticians, independents such as Hussain Shahristani, a nuclear physicist and an intimate of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani who was one of the organizers behind the UIA.

Some analysts see Allawi's omission as a plus: the prime minister's popular support has eroded dramatically since he took office June 30, in a deal engineered by the Americans and approved reluctantly by the U.N. As violence increased, and basic public services and reconstruction stalled, Allawi's government has taken much of the blame. Also off the Shiite list is Moqtada al-Sadr, the young radical whose anti-American insurgency was brought to a halt after Sistani intervened in August. Sadr had been negotiating for a position on the Shiite list, but in the end, according to Shahristani, he and his followers did not register as political parties or entities, and so could not join the coalition. "The Sadrist movement announced that it supports the religious authorities and its call for Iraqis to hold elections," Shahristani told reporters. "It also supports the list."

There was a stunning inclusion in the list, as well_Ahmad Chalabi and his exile-based Iraqi National Congress party. Chalabi, initially supported by the American government as a potential replacement for Saddam, has fallen into disfavor with the United States after a series of scandals and even allegations that he was working with Iranian intelligence. The State Department had long butted heads with the Pentagon over Chalabi, and INC figures have been accused in Congress of fabricating evidence on weapons of mass destruction to provoke the United States into invading Iraq. Chalabi's fall from grace culminated in a raid by U.S. troops on his homes and offices in Baghdad seven months ago, and Allawi's government briefly brought corruption charges against him. In addition, he has negligible support among non-exile Iraqis. But Chalabi has close ties with Iran, and recently has forged a relationship with both Sistani, an Iranian-born cleric, and with Sadr.

The UIA is an attempt to broaden the Shia list from a purely sectarian basis, and it is indeed more than just Shia religious parties_the major ones_and leading Shia individuals like Shahristani. "I think that this list is a patriotic list," said one of its leaders, Sheikh Fawaz al-Jarba, leader of a large Sunni tribe from the Mosul area. There are also secular groups, Kurdish Shia, Turkomen and Yazidi sect members on the Shia list_although apparently no Christians, another leading minority that initially had wanted to join the alliance. But just how many of the candidates on the UIA list are non-Shia is unknown. "The agreement that was reached, was that we should not discuss the names [of candidates] at the present time," said Dawa Party official Ali al-Deeb, who was one of the candidates, at the press conference. "We are not going to mention the names, neither in this conference nor in another one." But Chalabi insisted it was not a secret list. "The names of the candidates are a matter of public record." Once, of course, the public record is released, and so far the elections commission has not announced any intention to do so.

What is certain is that most on the Shia list will win these elections if they do take place. Shahristani said the marjaya, the Shiite supreme religious leadership, and Grand Ayatollah Sistani, its preeminent figure, appointed the six-member committee that put the coalition together. That gives it Sistani's implicit endorsement at the very least. And Shahristani even left open the possibility that Sistani might explicitly endorse the slate. "Whether he will support the list or not, is not known, but he has encouraged all Iraqis to participate in the elections," Shahristani said.

The voting system set up for Iraq by the former American civil administration is proportional, with parties running a slate of candidates elected on a national basis. That means that the seats in the 275-member National Assembly will be awarded to each slate proportional to the number of votes each wins. So if the UIA wins 60 percent of the vote, it will get 60 percent of the seats, with the remainder going to the losing slates similarly. In that case, candidates whose names are near the top of the list are all but guaranteed election, even in losing slates; while those near the bottom have less chance. Thus the order in which the candidates' names appear on the list is vital_and UIA spokesmen refused to say even who the top ones were, let alone their order. Aides to Chalabi, however, said he is in the top 15 of the UIA list. And a source at SCIRI named the No. 1 position as going to Sayid Ali al-Hakim, who is Sistani's representative in Basra; as a nonpolitician, he was a compromise to stop bickering among parties on who got top billing. Sayid Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the head of SCIRI, is No. 2; an unidentified woman third, and the current interim vice president, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, is fourth, these sources say. Shahristani himself is No. 7 on the list, while Chalabi is 10th.

Complicating the distribution of names on the list is the requirement that 25 percent of the names be women_and the Shia list, its representatives said, included 33 percent women, though none were among the eight candidates who revealed themselves at the press conference, and no women's names were released. Women lower down on the list will be given preference in the award of assembly seats, to keep with the requirement that at least one quarter of the assembly be female.

The new assembly will elect a prime minister and a cabinet, and will also preside over a constitutional convention to write a new constitution, which will then go to a referendum sometime next year. Then the first constitutional national elections will be held, in December 2005. Hopefully, by then, Iraqis will know in advance who they're voting for.

c 2004 Newsweek, Inc.

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Citation: Rod Nordland, "You're Voting for Whom?," Newsweek, 10 December 2004; Original URL:
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6689439/site/newsweek/