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Iraq ready for decisive election in a week
9.12.2005
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BAGHDAD (Reuters)
- Iraq's preparations are complete for its
parliamentary election, the Electoral Commission
said on Thursday, a week before a vote that may set
the balance of power for years to come in a nation
at risk of all-out civil war.
"Our preparations have ended and everything is now
ready," Commission chairman Hussein Hindawi told
Reuters.
A suicide bombing that killed at least 30 people in
Baghdad on a bus headed for the Shi'ite south and
the reported killing of a kidnapped American were
reminders if they were needed that the threat
remains high of violence from al Qaeda and other
Sunni Arabs opposed to the U.S.-installed political
system.
But unlike January's interim poll, the first since
the U.S. invasion of 2003 that overthrew Saddam
Hussein, the December 15 election for a full-term
parliament is likely to see much of the once
dominant Sunni minority come out and vote, hoping to
punch their full weight in bruising political
battles to come.
A profusion of candidates and a sense that, with a
four-year term and a likely reduction in the U.S.
presence over that time, this election offers real
power to the victors, have meant that Baghdad and
other cities are wallpapered in political posters,
giving an air of import and expectation to the
campaign.
While U.S. President George W. Bush and his
officials are quick to note the contrast with Iraq's
authoritarian past -- of which voters have been
reminded this week by intensive coverage of Saddam's
trial -- the bitterness of the campaign rhetoric,
along with violence and threats, are troubling for
the future.
Bush, in a speech on Wednesday answering domestic
critics with a rundown of where he saw economic
progress in Iraq, acknowledged the problems posed by
sectarian militias -- many of which owe allegiance
to Shi'ite Islamist parties now in power.
His envoy to Iraq has mediated in sectarian and
ethnic feuds that, were it not for the presence of
massive American firepower, are bitter enough to
spark all-out civil war.
"We do hope leaders emerge who can work for national
unity ... to help heal the divisions of the past and
build bridges among different communities for a
positive future," ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said
in an election address to Iraqi media.
CONSTITUTIONAL DIVIDE
The risk remains, however, that an influx in numbers
of leaders of the 20-percent Sunni minority to the
new parliament will not break the stalemate over
competing demands.
Khalilzad constantly assures Sunni leaders they will
be able to negotiate amendments to the constitution
in the new assembly -- a promise he extracted from
the Shi'ite and Kurdish interim government to help
defuse a Sunni veto in October's referendum.
Yet the campaign, in its rhetoric at least, leaves
little room to suppose a peaceful compromise will be
easy among Kurds set on virtual independence,
Shi'ites keen to assert majority rule, Islamic law
and a big share of oil revenues and Sunnis anxious
to regain a prominent role in a centralised Iraqi
state.
The polarisation of the electorate in different
regions has meant in effect a series of parallel
campaigns are being waged that has exposed splits,
however, within all the communities.
Mob violence against a minority Islamist party in
Kurdistan this week showed up the ugly side of a
drive by the region's two main parties, both secular
though long at war with each other, to monopolise
Kurdish votes and maximise their say in Baghdad.
Similarly, Shi'ite leaders campaigning against the
ruling Alliance coalition, formed mainly by the
Islamists of SCIRI and Dawa, have complained of
violence and intimidation in the south.
Prominent among those voicing outrage has been Iyad
Allawi, the secular Shi'ite appointed prime minister
under U.S. rule in 2004; he has welded a broad,
non-sectarian coalition with conspicuously deep
pockets and has mounted a serious challenge to the
Alliance, which won an outright majority in January.
U.S.-led Coalition officials in Iraq have made
little secret of their disappointment with the
interim government, feeling it has done too little
to appease Sunnis, not least through its ties to
Washington's adversaries in Shi'ite Iran, and has
failed to show Iraqis economic benefits from the
advent of democracy.
Though his government was tarred with accusations of
graft, Allawi, a former agent of U.S. and British
intelligence with a strongman image, might well suit
Washington as prime minister.
Bush and his officials are adamant Iraqis will
choose their own government. And few doubt the
Alliance will win most votes.
But with a broad coalition government likely,
Western officials in Baghdad are talking of a new
Allawi administration:
"It certainly hasn't been an auspicious transitional
government," one said on Thursday. "Allawi ... could
emerge as an acceptable candidate for prime
minister. To some he's maybe not their man; but he's
not the other guy's man either."
Reuters
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