By Carl Conetta
Project on Defense Alternatives, 30 December 2005
Barring special intervention, the final tally of Iraq national council seats won in the 15 December 2005 election will show further deterioration in the relative position of Sunni Arab parties. This much can be deduced from the national vote totals and the structure of the Iraqi electoral system.
Sunni Arab displeasure with the poll results have focused on some instances of voting irregularities. But the impact of these irregularities may be minor compared with structural features of the Iraqi electoral system that put Sunni Arab areas at a disadvantage. These features may clip Sunni Arab representation by 12 percent or more, feeding Sunni suspicions of the electoral process.
Regarding other electoral results: The main Shia religious coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance (or Unified Iraqi Coalition), will also show some slippage (in terms of percentage), although smaller Shia religious lists will make gains. The Kurdish alliance and Iyad Allawi's Iraqi National List will either retain their current
position or make minor gains (again: in terms of percent of total seats won) when the electoral tabulation is complete.
The two parties most favored in Sunni Arab areas - the Iraqi Accord Front (or Tawafoq Iraqi Front) and the Hewar National Iraqi Front - together won about 45 of the 230 seats attached to provinces, giving them 19.5 percent. But their final tally will give them only about 18.5 of the total 275 council seats.
* By contrast, the Kurdish alliance will control about 20 percent of assembly seats.
* The main Shia religious alliance, the United Iraqi Alliance (or Unified Iraqi Coalition) will control about 49.5 percent of the total seats. Other smaller Shia religious lists will add to this total.
* Iyad Allawi's National Iraqi List will probably garner about 6.5 percent of the total council seats.
These estimates are based on provisional vote totals for provinces and for "special" populations" as reported by the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq. Also explained on their web site are the rules governing the allocation of seats. http://www.ieciraq.org (Disqualification of some votes due to irregularities might marginally affect the estimates offered above.)
The Sunni Arab community will find it difficult to accept that 18.5 percent of council seats constitutes fair representation - although a portion of Allawi's votes may also be considered "Sunni-based". At any rate, the current electoral system has disadvantaged the Sunni regions in several ways, as explained below. (In this light, the votes totals should leave no doubt that Sunni Arabs constitute more than 20 percent of the Iraqi population).
ANOTHER PERFECTLY AVOIDABLE MESS
There are many ways that the Iraqi electoral system could have been organized in accord with democratic practice, but several are especially relevant to understanding the current impasse and how it might have been avoided.
"Option 1" is the system employed in January 2005, which allowed assembly seats to float free of provinces. This treated all Iraq as a single electoral district - an unusual practice, especially for a country as large, varied, and divided as iraq. Using this approach, any distinction between regions affecting poll access or mobilization of local voters - such as security problems or military operations - would translate into different degrees of representation in government. And, because Iraq's main ethnic and religious groups tend to concentrate regionally, regional differences attain an ethnic hue, giving rise to complaints about discrimination. The overall impact of the original Iraqi system was to make every election a contest between regions (ethnic groups) over their relative degrees of representation in government.
A second feature of the original Iraqi system was Proportional Representation (PR). This is a progressive feature, but it cannot alleviate the problem of regional differentials in poll access.
"Option 2" - the road not taken: By contrast, Iraq might have adopted a system that allocated ALL assembly seats to provinces (based on some consistent standard, such as relative population size or relative numbers of registered voters). This approach, which resembles the one used for congressional elections in the United States, would have prevented elections from becoming contests between (ethnic) regions. Instead, elections would have been contests between parties within regions. This would have blunted the impact of any inter-regional differences in poll access. Proportional representation might have been applied in this system too - but within provinces, not nationally.
In a sense, Option 2 distinguishes between the relative "voice" that provinces would have in government and their decisions about how to use that voice. The first would be determined by a democratic compact - the allocation of seats to regions - and would not be "up for grabs" at every election. The second would be the object of elections. People would decide how they want to use their voice by choosing among candidates and parties. And, of course, parties could compete in as many provinces as they like.
"Option 3": In the actual event, the system employed in the recent December 2005 election combined elements of the two systems outlined above. While 230 assembly seats were tied to provinces, 45 were allowed to float free. In the inter-regional battle for the 45 national seats, differences in poll access had full play. Rural areas and those areas most plagued by terrorist activity and military operations were put at a disadvantage. Due to lower voter turnout, the interests and preferences of these provinces will have less impact on the final complexion of government.
The system employed for the recent elections has another feature that puts Sunni areas at a disadvantage: the 230 seats attached to provinces were allocated on the basis of voter registration numbers formulated in late 2004, when the Sunni election boycott and coalition military operations were at a peak. At the time, voter registration officials fully recognized the shortfall in efforts in several Sunni-majority provinces.
Considered together, the two factors mentioned above might easily have cost Sunni areas (and the parties they preferred) six seats in the assembly. Indeed, if we assume that all seats were assigned to provinces in accord with the adjusted population figures currently used by the Iraqi Ministry of Planning, the recent election returns would have given the Iraqi Accord Front and the Hewar National Iraqi Front a combined total of 56 to 58 seats, rather than their likely win of 50 to 52 seats.
Resource material:
* The Election Process Information Collection (EPIC) project provides data on a variety of electoral systems worldwide: http://www.epicproject.org/en/
* Iraq Living Conditions Survey 2004, Volume I: Tabulation Report, produced
by the UN Development Program and the Iraqi Ministry of Planning and Development Cooperation, provides 2004 population estimates. See page 16. http://www.iq.undp.org/ILCS/overview.htm
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Citation: Carl Conetta. "Sunni parties may lose ground in final tally," Project on Defense Alternatives, 30 December 2005.
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