In Iraq, a preelection power play

With elections less than a month away, Iraq's would-be politicians are getting a crash course in one of democracy's least glamorous features: preelection backroom haggling.

As the deadline looms for submitting party slates to Iraq's electoral commission, Iraqi candidates are vying for plum positions on the all-important lists, which will determine who gets a seat in Iraq's new national parliament.

In a sense, these backroom bargains are the elections before the elections, pitting big players - mainly well-organized former exiles - against more-popular homegrown leaders, including top Shiite figures, the real king-makers in the process.

"The election is like an exam," says Sheikh Fatih Kashif al-Ghitta, a Shiite cleric from a prominent Najaf political family. "[It] will show who really has a base of popular support and who is a fake; who has religious authority and who does not. It will clarify many things."

Each group draws up a list of candidates, ranked first to last.

The total votes each party receives will determine how many seats it gets in Iraq's National Assembly. Because seats are doled out in the same order as the list, highly placed candidates are more likely to get a seat.

Every third candidate must be a woman, in order to avoid parties putting all the women at the bottom of the list, a typical maneuver in some countries with gender quotas.

Voters won't have to sift through hundreds of names at the ballot box; rather, they'll see parties' names and logos.

So far, about 238 "parties" - something of a misnomer, since informal groups and even individuals are free to run - have signed up for the elections. On Nov. 28, the election commission extended the deadline for the parties to submit their slates until Dec. 10 (Dec. 5 in provincial offices), adding to the intense speculation over what party lists will emerge.

The extension buys time for the interim government to woo Sunni opposition groups, many of whom have declared a boycott of the elections. If Sunnis sit out the elections, the new government's legitimacy could suffer. It's too late for Sunnis to sign up their own parties, but if prominent Sunnis could be talked into signing onto other lists, it would help the election's legitimacy.

The delay is also likely to help lesser-known candidates, many of whom are still negotiating with larger groups for better placement on the lists. Many smaller groups, especially homegrown Iraqi groups, are using the extra time to reach out to larger, more established political parties.

For most candidates, the best way to win a seat is to gain a top slot on a powerful party's list.

Page: 1 | 2