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Baghdad -- With the euphoria of Iraq's historic
elections fading and the results being announced
today showing an increasingly fractured political
body, Iraqis are confronting a daunting year of
pressing political and economic problems.
The challenges the new government will inherit range
from generating more electric power to fighting
crime and terrorism. The 275 members of the new
National Assembly and the leaders they will select
must not only battle insurgents who want to
overthrow the government, but also accommodate the
rising expectations of ordinary Iraqis who have
grown tired of waiting for a better life.
The biggest hurdle the transitional government faces
is how to forge a national vision now that Iraqis
have begun to retreat into ethnic and sectarian
identities.
Preliminary election results that began trickling
out last week showed the Shiite-led United Iraqi
Alliance coalition and the Kurdish list dominating
the vote. Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's Iraqi
List, which spent millions on a slick ad campaign
that attempted to draw votes across Iraq's
demographic spectrum, lagged a distant third.
Mishan al-Jabouri, leader of the Homeland Party,
tried to come up with a political strategy to bridge
those splits. Instead, he got a harsh lesson in the
fractured political realities of contemporary Iraq.
Al-Jabouri, a Sunni Arab from one of Iraq's largest
tribes, chose Sheikh Thaer al-Kitab, an esteemed
Shiite leader, as No. 2 on his ticket, hoping to
draw Shiite votes. He spoke out for Kurdish rights,
hoping to draw some votes from the Kurds who
dominate northern Iraq. But in the end, many Sunnis
stayed home, the Kurds voted for the Kurdish list,
and the Shiites voted for Shiites.
Even Kitab, a resident of Hilla, south of Baghdad,
got only 400 votes in his own hometown, where nearly
everyone voted for the Alliance list, which had been
endorsed by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
"One day before the election, I said there is no
Sunni and there is no Shiite," said al-Jabouri,
arguing for a united Iraq. "But for me, that's
over."
Organizers of an unofficial referendum held during
the election among Iraqi Kurds revealed another
glaring crack in the edifice of Iraq: Ninety-nine
percent of the 1.9 million Kurds who took part in
the poll said they preferred an independent
Kurdistan over a unified Iraq, according to Aso
Kareem, a member of the high committee of the
Kurdistan Referendum Movement.
Iraqis will spend the next year in the painful
process of figuring out what kind of country they
want as the members of the new parliament oversee
the writing of a constitution, which must be
ratified in a national referendum by Oct. 15. The
lawmakers must decide on everything from what kind
of political system they want to how quickly they
want to move toward a free- market economy and how
aggressively they wish to prosecute crimes committed
under Saddam Hussein's government. And if voters
reject the constitution -- under rules that give
both the Kurdish provinces and the Sunni regions a
veto if they don't like what they see -- the whole
process must start all over again. If the
constitution is approved, new elections for a
permanent election must be held by the end of the
year.
"It is unquestionably true that Iraq has a distance
to go in terms of national reconciliation and
creating a common vision for the state of Iraq,"
said a Western diplomat, speaking on condition of
anonymity. "There were people running in this
election on a monarchy ticket. There were plenty of
people running to create an Islamic republic like
Iran."
The government also will have to juggle various
crises -- from outbreaks of terrorism to power
outages -- as well as cater to people's day- to-day
needs.
"I want peace to come to the country so that women
can go and out find jobs," said 30-year-old Sandra
Nadhem, who has a degree in accounting but has yet
to find work. "When we'll feel secure, I'll start
searching for a decent job."
All the major political groups promised voters peace
and prosperity, and many Iraqis hope they can
produce more than words.
"We have a lot of problems," said pharmacology
student Sabah Omar, 25, in the northern Iraqi city
of Irbil. "There is no electricity, no water and no
real freedom. There is a lot of unemployment and
salaries are not good. There are many promises. No
one has delivered."
Though the big-picture questions weigh heavily on
Iraqis' minds, so too do the type of
bread-and-butter issues most governments must
contend with.
"The best thing that would help is if the new
government will give us a piece of land so we can
build a house to live in," said Kadhem Rubayee, 47,
a used-car dealer who complained that exploding
housing costs had eaten away at his modest earnings.
"Everything else we work on ourselves."
His 40-year-old wife, Jenan Abed Radhi, said she
worried about the education of their 12-year-old
daughter Sani.
"Teachers in the past, because they were paid so
badly, were taking bribes from students for grades
and tutoring rich students for extra money," she
said. "We'd like the new government to give teachers
better salaries so we can get rid of these bad
habits."
Many Iraqis, who suffered great economic hardship
during 13 years of grinding U.N. sanctions, are
impatient for change.
Sana Naji Abdul Amir said she had to sell her
jewelry and family heirlooms to make ends meet on a
salary equivalent to $2 a month as an employee of a
state-owned insurance company. She is now earning
about $330 a month and is eager to improve her life,
but an inflation rate of 30 percent is cutting into
her ability to save.
"I don't have a house to live in," said Amir, the
47-year-old mother of two college-student daughters.
"Now I hope I can catch up."
Mohammad Ahmad Fattah, 43, an employee of Middle
East Bank of Iraq, hopes that after the government
tackles Iraq's terrorism problem, it can tame
soaring prices.
"We have to improve the value of the Iraqi dinar,"
he said. "It's true that our salaries have improved,
but there's so much inflation."
Regardless of what kind of country Iraq becomes and
what kind of system its new leaders choose to
emulate, many Iraqis say a government that pays
attention to their daily needs would be a welcome
break from the past.
"The most important thing,'' said Abdul Abdullah
Ibrahim, a 38-year-old owner of a curtain store, "is
that the government will recognize me as a human
being."
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