Twist in Iraq's democracy: anti-American party pushes electoral reform

In an unexpected twist for Iraq's nascent democracy, an anti-American party is speeding ahead with electoral reform while the Iraqi parliament is gridlocked over how to run national elections slated for January.

On Friday, supporters of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr voted directly for candidates in a primary poll ahead of national elections, calling it a milestone in the democratic process. The vote is believed by Iraqi officials to be the first time that choosing candidates for any party outside Iraqi Kurdistan has been placed in the hands of ordinary Iraqis.

"I can say that the Sadr movement achieved the highest level of democracy," says Sheikh Salman al-Furaiji, in charge of the Sadr offices on the Rusafah side of Baghdad, where 53 polling sites were open on Friday. Some 300,000 registered voters were to vote for almost 700 candidates in south and central Iraq.

But in the national elections slated for January, it's not certain that citizens across Iraq will be able to follow suit. The Iraqi parliament is still wrangling over an election law that would determine whether voters will be able to vote for individual candidates on an "open list" or retain the closed-list system of 2005 elections, in which voters are told only the parties' names and not the candidates.

A closed list would likely favor incumbent politicians expected to lose support at the polls for failing to deliver essential services and cut down on corruption. Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, recently issued a rare public pronouncement urging an open list for the next elections. And Sadr, who has been pursuing his religious education in Iran, has issued a decree directing followers not to participate in a closed list, some of his supporters said.

"If parliament does not pass an open list, we will not vote," says retired government worker Ali al-Lami, one of hundreds of men who had rolled out prayer rugs for Friday prayers on closed streets and sidewalks in Sadr City, Baghdad's biggest and poorest neighborhood. Some of the men brought umbrellas to shield them from the sun. Others wandered through the crowd spraying the worshippers with a cooling mist of rose-scented water.

Iron fences surrounding newly planted grass gleamed with fresh purple paint, but piles of garbage choked the streets. Electricity here is cut off for hours each day, and almost half the population has no jobs – a concern voters wanted candidates to address.

"The most important thing is for them to provide jobs," says Atheer Mohammad Hashim, a laborer who dropped out of school in the second grade when his cousin was executed, his father imprisoned, and their food ration card revoked under Saddam Hussein. He voted for an official in his neighborhood.

15-year-olds can vote

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