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Officials describe low
turnout among young voters as an alarm bell for the
Kurds.
As the hours ticked by on referendum day, election
officials at Kurdish polling stations noticed one
group of voters was clearly missing – young people.
From Halabja to Erbil to Sulaimaniyah, young Kurds
said they had no interest in voting on an Iraqi
constitution which, they claim, did not support
Kurdish rights or self-determination. But rather
than endorse the political process by voting against
the constitution, they chose to stay away from the
polls.
"There is nothing good for the Kurds in the
constitution that would make me vote for it,” said
Barzan Muhammed Naseem, a 23-year-old student in
Erbil. “The Kurdistan parties wanted to mislead
people.”
Imad Ahmed, the Kurdistan region deputy prime
minister in Sulaimaniyah and a Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan, PUK, official, said the youth boycott was
“an alarm bell for Kurds”.
“The lack of youth participation in voting is a
warning for those in power in Kurdistan," he said.
Kurdish Iraqis in their late teens and twenties have
spent at least half of their lives under
semi-autonomous rule. Since 1991, the PUK and the
Kurdistan Democratic Party, KDP, have run the three
Kurdish provinces and are now facing disgruntled
youth who don’t believe the parties represent their
interests.
Ahmed acknowledged that many young people did not
believe Kurdish leaders pushed hard enough for
Kurdish rights in negotiating the constitution and
stayed away from the polls as a result. Many
specifically wanted the constitution to guarantee
Kurds, who make up about 20 per cent of Iraq’s
population, the right to self-determination if they
experienced discrimination in the new system.
“They are wary of going to the polls time after time
without seeing any results,” he said.
The constitution, which the Kurdish political
parties played a major role in drafting, was widely
expected to pass in Kurdish areas ahead of the
referendum. As a result, some said young people did
not believe votes against it would impact the
results.
Still, in Sulaimaniyah, many were sceptical of the
turnout and approval figures.
Officials with the Independent Electoral Commission
of Iraq initially reported a 72 per cent voter
turnout in Sulaimaniyah, with 98 per cent of the
voters approving the constitution. It has not
released figures for Erbil and Duhuk, the two other
Kurdish provinces.
The electoral commission said it is recounting
ballots from provinces where extraordinarily high
number of voters cast their ballots for the
constitution.
While the commission did not track voters by age,
election workers and Kurdish leaders said they
believed the youth had the lowest participation
rates of any group at the polls.
Ako Khalil, a 28-year-old electrical engineer who
managed one of the voting centres in Sulaimaniyah,
maintained that young people were fed up with the
Kurdish political parties, which have been accused
of corruption and of not providing basic necessities
such as water, electricity and affordable housing.
Asos Hardi, editor-in-chief of the weekly newspaper
Hawlati in Sulaimaniyah, said young people “did not
vote on the constitution because they wanted to take
revenge on the Kurdistan political parties".
“They blotted out anything in the constitution that
benefited the Kurds,” said Shaho Taha, a 22-year-old
student at the central teachers’ institute in
Sulaimaniyah.
He maintained that he could not vote for a
constitution that did not recognise Kurdish as an
official language in Iraq.
The constitution in fact declares Arabic and Kurdish
as Iraq’s two official languages. But many young
people never read the document, said Kamal Ghambar,
director of the electoral commission’s Erbil office.
Khalil noted that few people in Kurdistan received
copies of the proposed constitution. The draft was
distributed throughout the country - and then
amended - just days before the October 15
referendum.
While many in the Kurdish territories - and Iraq as
a whole - may not have read the constitution in its
entirety, young Kurdish voters said they knew enough
to determine it would not serve them.
"I won’t vote for a constitution that is drafted on
a religious and sectarian basis,” said Saiwan
Kareem, a 25-year-old university student in
Sulaimaniyah. “The rights of the Kurds are not
realised in this constitution."
“I don’t believe in the process at all,” said Seever
Kamal, 26, a Halabja resident whose father and two
brothers died when the Ba’athist military launched
chemical attacks in her town in 1988. She refused to
vote, because the constitution did not compensate
Halabja victims and their relatives.
"The constitution is drafted in the interest of the
Arabs,” she said. “In order for us not to be exposed
to more chemical bombings, I won't vote for it. I
want Kurdistan be independent and not to stay with
Iraq."
Amanj Khalil is an IWPR trainee journalist in
Sulaimaniyah.
www.iwpr.net
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