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ERBIL,
IRAQ -- There are still more than three weeks
before Iraqis are scheduled go to the polls to
jostle for spots at the country's new political
table. But for the Kurdish minority parties in the
north, Jan. 30 will hardly be a democratic feast in
the making even if the vote comes off. For them, the
results are already known.
That Kurdish groups should agree to set up a
coalition was only to be expected. With few friends
in the rest of the country, the Kurds see a united
front as their only hope of getting what they want
from the new constitution.
But on Dec. 1, Kurdish leaders went a step further,
announcing that their two main parties, plus half a
dozen smaller organizations, had agreed to form a
joint list for the Kurdistan regional parliamentary
elections, which are due to take place on the same
day as the wider vote. The agreement, negotiated in
secret, allots 80 per cent of the coalition's seats
equally between the Kurdistan Democratic Party and
the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan; the smaller
parties get the rest.
Both PUK and KDP leaders described their decision as
a response to public demand, and indeed, many Kurds
say they approve of their leaders' decision to strip
them of almost all influence in the shaping of their
new government.
"It would be nice if the democratization of Kurdish
society could go hand in hand with the strengthening
of our position within Iraq. Unfortunately, the
situation in Iraq right now makes that impossible,
and national rights must come before individual
ones," said Stran Abdullah, editor of the
Sulaimaniyah-based newspaper Asso.
"The Kurds have to show the Arab world, the U.S. and
the Europeans that they are united on the Kurdish
issue," agreed Fuat Hussein, a deputy member of the
Governing Council that ruled Iraq immediately after
the toppling of the Baathist regime. "How can
parties in coalition for the national elections
possibly fight a Kurdish election as rivals? That's
absurd and self-defeating."
There are some who are not convinced by the
patriotic rhetoric.
"What we are facing now is not a democratic
election, but a sort of single-party referendum,"
said Assos Herdi, editor of Hawlati, Iraqi
Kurdistan's only independent newspaper.
"It's like George Bush and John Kerry running
together against Ralph Nader," added Said Mohamed, a
student in Sulaimaniyah, the capital of the
southern, PUK-controlled half of Iraqi Kurdistan. "I
hope they win 99 per cent of the vote, like that
other expert at democratic elections, Saddam
Hussein."
But apart from the websites of the more radical
diaspora groups, such discontent with the Kurdish
leadership is not widespread. Many say the joint
list offers a solution to an issue close to every
Kurd's heart: the need to end their society's deep
political divisions.
Briefly united in an uneasy power-sharing
arrangement after the de facto secession of Iraqi
Kurdistan in 1991, the KDP and PUK were fighting
each other by 1993. Northern Iraq has since been
divided into two zones of influence, each with its
own party-controlled ministries, budget and
military. Even the 2001 decision to reconvene the
regional parliament after an adjournment of eight
years was made under international pressure and
failed to hide the fact that real power lay with the
party leaders in their separate fiefs.
Kemal Khambar, who heads the Erbil branch of the
newly formed electoral commission, insisted that the
so-called closed-list electoral system the United
Nations chose for Iraq will change that.
"In the past, leaders were able to fire deputies at
will," he explained. "They can't any more. It's a
first foothold for a real parliamentary opposition."
But such arguments don't convince Mr. Herdi, the
Hawlati editor. He said the real reason for the
coalition is the constitutional inability of Kurdish
leaders to lose gracefully, and dismissed as naive
those who argue that vote-sharing has prevented
further civil strife.
"This agreement doesn't solve anything," he said.
"Frankly, it would be better for tensions between
the parties to come to the surface now, with Iraq
weak and the coalition forces on hand."
Others spread the blame to international insistence
on the need to legitimize an Iraqi government as
soon as possible, and to the pretence that Iraq is a
unified country.
"If elections were purely regional, Iraqis would
vote for people they approve of," Sulaimaniyah-based
journalist Hiwa Osman said. "As it is, Kurds will
vote for Kurds, Shiites for Shiites, and Sunni for
Sunni.
"These elections are nothing to do with democracy.
They're all about domination, and that merely
consolidates the power of people who are a model of
bad governance."
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