By Niko Kyriakou
OneWorld, 14 December 2005
SAN FRANCISCO - Iraqis will choose 275 new legislators Thursday, but some experts warn that the country's improved voting procedures will still under-represent its Sunni Arab minority and could cause a backlash.
Voters will choose from among some 200 parties and 7,000 candidates for slots in the country's National Assembly, which will legislate during the next four years and choose Iraq's first constitutional government since Saddam Hussein was ousted in 2003.
Votes for National Assembly seats will be tallied by province this time instead of in one national batch.
The new system is expected to help the regionally clumped Sunnis--as well as Iraq's other minority groups--elect more of their own representatives.
Most U.S. officials and Middle East experts agree the upcoming vote will be fairer to Sunnis than the interim government elections held last January, and expect increased participation by Sunni minorities to help stabilize the country.
"It's a good thing," Ken Pollack, senior foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institute's Saban Center for Middle East Policy, told OneWorld this week.
But Carl Conetta, co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives, says the improved procedures are still biased against Sunnis and may only have temporary calming effects. He worries that the vote will later be pointed at to discredit the new government.
The system "virtually guarantees that Sunni Arabs will be under-represented in government," states a report released over the weekend by Conetta's group, which is run by the Commonwealth Institute, a Massachusetts-based non-profit, and seeks security through gradual demilitarization.
"Sunnis probably have high hopes now, but many groups will be disappointed," said Conetta, who authored a 2004 monograph that deals with civilian casualties in the war on Iraq.
He says the main problem is that the number of representatives allocated to each Iraqi province will not correspond to its population, as is roughly the case for the U.S. Congress.
Instead, the number of representatives for each province will be based on the number of people who registered to vote in those provinces last January, an election that many Sunnis boycotted.
The result is that Iraq's four Sunni Arab majority provinces, which represent about 24 percent of the country's population, will only be able to capture 20 percent of the 230 seats assigned by province, or 8 fewer seats than their population should warrant, according the report.
By contrast, the three Kurdish dominated provinces, which account for some 13 percent of Iraq's population, will receive 15 percent of the new seats.
"If you don't believe the insurgency has anything to do with legitimate complaints [then] this is not going to matter. But my theory is that the majority of the insurgency is tied to legitimate concerns--and what this approach has done is inflame and feed those concerns and hence undercuts efforts to stabilize," Conetta said.
"This is no way to win hearts and minds or to erode support for the insurgency," states the report.
In addition, 45 National Assembly seats will be awarded based on the old system of national--instead of provincial--vote tallies, dispersing the Sunnis' concentrated regional clout, and exposing their often weak turnout at the polls.
Although 1,000 Sunni clerics issued a fatwa, or religious edict, Tuesday encouraging Sunnis to vote in this week's elections, security problems may make voter turnout a continuing problem for Sunnis.
According to the U.S. Defense Department's October 2005 report on Iraq, 94 percent of all insurgent attacks between August 29 and September 16 occurred in just six provinces, four of them with Sunni majorities.
Less violence is expected during Thursday's election because various Iraqi insurgent groups have admonished their followers not to attack polling stations. But even without attacks, ongoing U.S. military operations in Sunni regions could pose a considerable disincentive to Sunnis who would like to vote, according to Eric Leaver, a research fellow in the peace and security program at the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).
"U.S. offensive military campaigns in the northern sections are affecting voter turnout in key areas. Especially in Ninawa where Sunnis who flee from fighting will disrupt the voter turnout," Leaver told OneWorld.
Conetta added, "in some areas people are going to have to run a gauntlet of billy clubs to vote and in other areas people can just walk in."
Holding elections that disadvantage Sunnis would run counter to the Bush Administration's stated intentions for Iraq's new government, namely, to create institutions "that offer power-sharing mechanisms and minority protections," and which "demonstrate to disaffected Sunnis that they have influence and the ability to protect their interests in a democratic Iraq."
Speaking in Philadelphia Sunday President Bush said that this week's elections "won't be perfect," and cited the need for "reconciliation" among Shiites, Sunni Arabs, and Kurds who have feuded for centuries.
Conetta says the current voting procedures reflect but do not serve U.S. interests in Iraq and believes the system was not intentionally rigged to exclude Sunnis.
"I don't think there was any explicit design on anybody's part to use this mechanism to reduce Sunni influence."
"The U.S. has emphasized its alliance and its relationship with the Kurds and with the Shi'a expatriate organizations. These were key to our capacity to have an occupation that might be able to stand.
"So we've been very careful about those groups and not so careful about the Sunnis."
The current voting system may be mostly the fruit of the U.S. government's initial strong relationship with Kurds and expatriate Shi'as, but it is also flawed due to the urgency with which the U.S. has tried to prop up an Iraqi government, Conetta says.
The biggest danger however, may not be whether Sunnis get a totally fair deal in Thursday's elections, but whether the attitude of Iraq's various minority groups towards Sunnis changes.
"The future of Iraq isn't going to be determined on the issue of Sunnis getting 20, or 15, or even 25 percent of the seats," said IPS's Leaver.
"It will be the issue of the Kurds and Shiites understanding that they must give the Sunnis real political control and options for a viable future."
Iraqis are expected to vote Thursday along ethnic and religious lines. Approximately 60% of the country's population are Arabs practicing the Shi'a brand of Islam, while Sunni Arabs--those credited with leading the insurgency against Coalition forces and Iraq's interim government--account for about 20%. Some 15% of the population are Kurds, most of whom also practice Sunni Islam, and various ethnic and religious groups make up the remaining 5%.
Shi'as believe that the prophet Muhammad appointed his descendents as the leaders of the Muslim community while Sunnis believe that Muhammad never appointed a successor. Sunnis want Islam to be governed by non-blood-related Muslim leaders, called Caliphs, according to Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia.
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Citation: Niko Kyriakou. "Iraq Elections Said Still Slanted Against Sunnis, Could Hurt Stabilization Efforts," OneWorld, 14 December 2005.
Original URL: http://us.oneworld.net/article/view/124004/1/
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