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Iraqi political parties threaten a boycott
23.12.2005
By Omar Fekeiki and Jonathan Finer
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Coalition Demands New Elections
BAGHDAD, Dec. 23 -- A coalition of more than
60 political parties threatened Thursday to boycott
Iraq's next parliament and warned of a surge in
violence if new nationwide elections were not held.
The group, led by top Sunni Arab parties and the
secular coalition led by former interim prime
minister Ayad Allawi, issued a statement denouncing
last Thursday's elections as fraudulent and listing
demands they said must be met before they would
participate in the new legislature.
Otherwise, "we will not have any other choice but to
boycott the political process and the coming
parliament," said the statement, read aloud during a
news conference attended by representatives from
most of the parties involved. "This would lead to
more struggle and bloody violence and threat to the
Iraqi entity and its people."
Shiite Muslim religious parties that dominate the
current government won by far the largest share of
votes, according to preliminary results released
this week by the Independent Electoral Commission of
Iraq. But more than 1,500 complaints have been made,
including 39 deemed serious enough to affect
results, election officials have said.
"How could we build an Iraq with a fraudulent
process?" demanded Ayham Samarraie, who heads the
Independent Iraqis Gathering, a Sunni party.
Referring to the Shiite-led governing parties, he
added, "This group wants to achieve power in Iraq
through cheating."
The call for new elections emerged from two days of
talks at Allawi's Baghdad office. The Tawafaq front,
a coalition led by the Iraqi Islamic Party, widely
considered the largest Sunni Arab party, and the
Iraqi Front for National Dialogue, led by Sunni
hard-liner Saleh Mutlak, were among the groups
involved in the talks. The parties that signed the
statement appear to have won as many as 80 seats in
the 275-seat National Assembly, according to an
analysis of preliminary results.
"We were all surprised by the forgery and fraud in
the election process," the statement said. "If these
violations pass without a punishment, they will
empower a phony democracy that's closer to a
dictatorship."
The call for new elections came on a day in which
British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld made unannounced visits
to Iraq. Rumsfeld told reporters that Iraqi
politicians had a "big, big, enormous" task ahead in
forming a government and that he hoped they would
choose "people who are going to pull that country
together toward the center and not pull it apart."
Early Friday, Rumsfeld said President Bush had
authorized new cuts in the U.S. military force in
Iraq to below 138,000 troops, the Associated Press
reported. Addressing U.S. troops in Fallujah,
Rumsfeld said the number of combat brigades would be
reduced from 17 to 15.
A reduction had been widely expected to begin by
early next year, though few specifics had been given
until now. U.S. officials have said that American
forces would be scaled back as Iraq's army improved.
Other demands issued by the newly formed coalition
included dissolution of the electoral commission --
which fielded tens of thousands of monitors last
week at polling sites -- because of its
"responsibility for violations and fraud in the
elections," the statement said. The coalition also
asked for last week's results to be independently
reviewed by international monitors such as the
United Nations.
Shiite leaders largely dismissed the protest. "These
are impossible demands to be fulfilled," said Saad
Jawad Taqi, a member of the Supreme Council for the
Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which heads the
governing coalition. "We have our complaints, too,
but the difference is that we don't boycott and
threaten to create a civil war."
Among the complaints received by the election
commission were allegations of ballot-stuffing by
poll workers and intimidation campaigns by militias
associated with political parties. Western diplomats
in Baghdad have categorized the elections as
imperfect but largely fair.
"All sides that competed in the election have
acknowledged there were problems during the
campaign," a U.S. official said, speaking on
condition of anonymity. "That's normal in a country
where democracy is as new as it is in Iraq."
Iraq's Sunni Arabs, who are said to make up the bulk
of the country's insurgency, have recently returned
to the political process after boycotting January
elections. Though only about 20 percent of the
population, they ruled Iraq for decades and have
struggled to come to terms with their diminished
power since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Elsewhere in Iraq on Thursday, heavy clashes took
place between Iraqi police and insurgents in the
Dora neighborhood south of Baghdad. Five insurgents
were killed, according to police Maj. Salim
Muhammad. News agencies reported that four policemen
were also killed.
Also, three Iraqi women were abducted from their car
at gunpoint near an entrance to Baghdad's Green
Zone, where they were employed, police said.
The U.S. military announced late Thursday that a
soldier in Baghdad had been killed by an improvised
bomb.
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