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In the Kurdish areas
where people are the most receptive to democracy,
they still find it hard to register to vote.
People in Iraq’s Kurdish region have been voicing
growing frustration over the process of registering
to vote in the January elections, citing numerous
mistakes in the registration forms and widespread
confusion about how to correct them.
“I read the form three times, and only then could I
figure it out,” said Hiwa Ghareeb Muhammed, a lawyer
in the city of Sulaimaniyah. “It is really difficult
for people to understand. And if there are mistakes,
no one knows how to correct them.”
Iraqi voters are set to go to the polls in late
January to elect a 275-seat National Assembly
charged with writing a new constitution and
appointing a transitional government. Voters in the
three Kurdish-controlled governorates will also
elect members to the Kurdish Assembly.
The northern region of Iraqi Kurdistan has enjoyed
semi-autonomy since 1991, when the United Nations
intervened to halt the Baathist regime’s attacks on
the Kurds. As a result of a more than a decade of
separate existence, the region has remained largely
free of the violence now plaguing the rest of the
country.
Consequently, the area should be one of the easiest
places for election officials to prepare for the
January poll, but voters here say the registration
process has been fraught with problems.
Registration forms were handed out together with
monthly food rations, and prospective voters then
had a chance to get errors fixed at local
registration centres. As well as people’s names and
genders being confused, some people found they had
been left off the register entirely.
The Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq has
already moved to correct some of the errors
identified early on. Registration centres discovered
that the youngest voters, born in 1986, had been
left off their lists, while the idea of logging
people’s sex was scrapped after the complaints about
mistakes became to numerous to deal with.
Other problems, however, have proved more difficult
to solve.
“My daughter is 22 years old, she lives at her
brother’s home in Erbil but her name isn’t on either
list,” complained one woman at a registration centre
in Sulaimaniyah. The registration manager told the
woman to come back when she had proof that her
daughter was not registered in Erbil.
Voters who have moved to another area say it is
unreasonable that they should have to go to the
registration centre in their original neighborhood.
“I can’t travel to Erbil, I just can’t afford to get
there or stay there,” said Rizgar Abdullah Hama-Karim,
a manual laborer. “If that’s how it is, my family
and I won’t be able to vote.”
Language issues are also presenting a problem in
Sulaimaniyah. While Iraq’s interim law recognises
Arabic and Kurdish as Iraq’s two official languages,
the registration centres are only making changes to
documents written in Arabic.
“The forms were produced in Switzerland where they
only had access to Arabic fonts,” explained Soran
Ibrahim Arif, training director for the local branch
of the national election commission. “Since the
names were registered in Arabic from the beginning,
the forms need to be filled out in Arabic so as to
avoid confusion.”
Kurdish uses a modified version of the Arabic
alphabet that requires extra letters. Using only
Arabic-language forms means that some Kurdish
surnames are distorted, so that the name Chia has
become Jia on the voter list, with potentially
confusing consequences.
Anyone with a long surname also presents a problem
because the forms only provide space for ten
letters. The registration centres say they are
either writing the extra letters in the last space
or just dropping them altogether.
Arif admits that problems with the forms have
created confusion among some voters, “Generally, the
forms are not at a level that people can easily
understand, but it is hard to make them simpler.”
Voter confusion over the electoral process is only
to be expected in a nation that has not seen a
democratic election in decades.
Many people said they had not been able to find out
the location of their local registration centre, nor
did they know when deadline for registration passes,
or how to recognise mistakes on their forms.
Some registration officials blamed the media for not
giving the issue enough coverage.
“Media channels did give some exposure to the
program, but it wasn’t enough, they could have been
made more active,” said Sidiq Sadraddin Bahzad, who
manages one of the 11 registration centres in
Sulaimaniyah.
But the head of Sulaimaniyah’s electoral commission
said he was satisfied with the media’s efforts.
“They published whatever we sent them, and I held
interviews and press conferences with all the local
TV channels,” said Hama-Salih Hama-Amin.
A limited budget for advertising also played a role.
Electoral officials say they received only part of
the budget due them from Baghdad headquarters. The
money covered the setup of the Sulaimaniyah office,
but was not enough to cover staff salaries or
running costs.
Others claims the registration process was flawed
from the beginning. For Bahzad, the system of tying
voter registration to food ration forms failed to
take basic human nature into account.
“If a family member has travelled abroad, or is
dead, or another fictitious family member was
registered, people do not want to bring it to
anyone’s attention in case they lose their food
ration.”
Rebaz Mahmood is an IWPR trainee.
http://www.iwpr.net
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