Iraq officials reject US election proposal
Idea of 'special' seats for Sunnis called 'unacceptable' interference.
A proposal floated by the US government and
several US senators Sunday to 'adjust' the outcome of next month's election in Iraq to ensure more Sunni representation has been rejected by the Iraq Electoral Commission (IEC).
The Daily Star of Lebanon reports that IEC spokesman Farid Ayyar described the US proposal as
"unacceptable" interference, saying: "Who wins, wins. That is the way it is. That is the way it will be in the election."
Meanwhile, the
BBC reports that Iraq's main Sunni party announced Monday
it would withdraw from the January 30 election, all but ensuring an assembly overwhelmingly dominated by Shiite representatives. Iraq is composed of 60 percent Shiites, 20 percent Sunnis and 20 percent Kurds.
On Sunday,
The New York Times reported that US officials in Baghdad had
already raised the issue of special seats for top Sunni vote-getters with an aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite cleric. The US is reportedly afraid that if the new assembly
doesn't reflect the ethnic and racial mix of Iraq, then sectarian violence will continue, and the current insurgency will grow even stronger.
As if to underline this point,
CNN reports that a
car bomb exploded at the gate of the home of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Mr. Hakim is also the head of Iraq's largest Shiite political bloc of parties, and is expected to be
one of the dominant figures in Iraq after the election. Although Hakim was not hurt by the blast, the
Associated Press reports that at least 15 others were killed.
Last week, the
BBC reported that attacks on top Shiite clerics and around many Shiite holy places like Najaf and Karbal are believed to be attampts by Sunni militants to
provoke a Shiite reaction that would undermine both the January election and reconstruction efforts. So far Shiite leaders have called for calm and order after these attacks.
The
International Republican Institute, a US government-funded nonprofit organization that promotes democracy worldwide and whose board of directors contains many
Republican party foreign policy experts, has released a new poll of 2200 Iraqis that shows that nearly three-quarters intend to vote in the January election, and that a small majority believe the country is headed in the right direction.
But the poll also shows that significantly fewer Sunnis intend to vote. Respondents to the poll broke down roughly 60 percent Shiite and 36 percent Sunni, close to Iraq's actual ethnic makeup. The cities of Ramadi, Fallujah and Mosul were not included because of fears of violence against poll takers.
Finally, Haifa Zangana, an Iraqi author who was imprisoned by Saddam Hussein, writes in the Guardian that women in Iraq, long viewed as being
the most liberated women in the Middle East, are now in danger of losing much of that independence in the upcoming elections.
Of all the blunders by the US administration in Iraq, the greatest is its failure to understand Iraqi people, women in particular. The main misconception is to perceive Iraqi women as silent, powerless victims in a male-controlled society in urgent need of 'liberation.'
Ms. Zangana writes of the growing gap between the average Iraqi citizen and the "cocooned" members of the US-led coalition and the interim government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. They do not understand, she says, that when Iraqi mothers want to quiet misbehaving children, they threaten, "Quiet, or I'll call democracy."
Also...
•
Escalating pre-election violence in Iraq claims another 19 lives (
Daily Star, Lebanon)
•
Poll shows active-duty troops in support of war (
USA Today)
•
Jet is an open secret in terror war (
Washington Post)
•
Shopping for war (
New York Times)
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