|
PERCHED
like a peaked cap on Iraq's sprawling torso, the
Kurdish northern enclave is set to emerge as the
strong winner from Sunday's elections and will
almost certainly hold the balance of power in the
new national assembly.
Although Kurdistan has only a fifth of Iraq's
population, its two main regional parties have
combined for the poll and are running a unified list
of Kurdish candidates.
"Kurds know more than anyone in Iraq the importance
of this election as a factor in their future," says
local political organiser Mustafa Omer.
"They understand how crucial it is that they assert
their place as the second-largest national group in
the country.
"They have suffered in the struggle they waged for
their rights for 10 years under Saddam Hussein, and
they have had the experience of voting in local
elections, so they are already well-educated in
democracy."
The expected upshot, according to observers in the
regional capital of Suleimaniyah, is that Kurds will
turn out in large numbers on polling day. And their
votes should help bring into being an Iraqi
government strongly influenced by the pro-Western
Kurdish leadership.
The newly established Iraqi national assembly will
have 275 members. The Kurdistan Alliance is expected
to win at least 40 to 50 seats, returned by voters
in the three northern provinces of Suleimaniyah,
Arbil and Dohuk.
And the figure may be significantly higher if voter
turnout in the rest of the violence-torn country is
low.
Kurdistan, protected by 80,000 peshmerga fighters,
is relatively peaceful and prosperous. As The
Economist magazine put it recently, locals like to
say visitors from the rest of Iraq are leaving a
state of emergency and entering an emerging state.
Kurdish political analyst Tofiq Abdol expects the
Kurdish bloc in the new parliament to swing behind
the centrist current in Iraqi politics once the
post-election horse-trading begins, and believes
this support will strengthen the hand of interim
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
"My conviction is that Kurdish politicians will
align themselves with the forces in Iraq, led by
Allawi, that have secular tendencies," he says.
There is a high level of co-operation between Allawi
and Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani. And Iraq's
interim president, Sheikh Gazi Al-Yawar, a Sunni, is
a frequent visitor to the Kurdish enclave, and
married to a Kurdish politician.
These connections form the groundwork for a
post-election compact that shape the agenda of Iraqi
politics over the next year, while a new
constitution is being drafted.
Given the probable arithmetic of the parliamentary
assembly, no single political group will be able to
form a government. This is because the majority Shia
population, which makes up 60 per cent of the
electorate, will divide its support between Allawi's
secular Iraqi List party and the Shia House group
backed by religious leader Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani.
The Sunnis, who make up the remaining fifth of the
electorate, may not be inclined to vote in large
numbers, given the security crisis in their region
and the high-profile calls to boycott the poll by
their leading parties.
But the consensus of observers in the north is that
strong security will encourage a moderate
participation rate. "I predict in the southern
regions of Iraq, the Shia and Sunni areas, voting
levels of 50 to 65 per cent, with the Shia vote
running stronger," Abdol says.
Such figures point to the complex coalition-building
ahead. To create a stable governing majority, the
next prime minister will need an alliance that
reaches well beyond the Kurdish bloc and a single
Shia party.
If Allawi's group performs well, it will still need
to gain the support of the Shia House, and a Sunni
party. Hence the future Iraqi government will be
developed on the basis of wide co-operation between
the different ethnic groups that compose the
country.
"It should be a mixture, the new parliament," Abdol
says. "It has been designed in such a way that no
single group can form the government on its own, and
so it will have to proceed as a coalition of
interests, with give-and-take on all sides."
And so, as Iraq heads for its assignation with
electoral freedom, its leaders are nervously aware
that demography condemns them all to a path of
compromise.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au
Top |
® 