THE IRAQI ELECTIONS 2010

HOPE OR DESPAIR:
The Iraqi Parliamentary Elections Are Now Upon Us

“What will matter most is the acceptance by the Iraqi people of the election results.”

Ad Melkert, U.N. Special Representative to Iraq

Today the first voters go to the polls in Iraq in what many consider to be a make-it-or-break-it time for Iraq’s embattled attempts to move beyond sectarianism and violence.

On Sunday, the majority of the approximately 19 million registered voters will go to one of 50,000 polling places across the country to vote for members of Parliament that now has 325 seats up for grabs. Iraqi exiles will be able to vote as well, and that final tally could be anywhere from 300,000 to 3 million. Approximately 180,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), within the country, driven from their homes because of sectarian warfare within their communities over the past year, will also be voting.

We want to salute the brave men and women of the U.N. ASSISTANCE MISSION FOR IRAQ (UNAMI), especially the Electoral Assistance Office, for the tireless and dedicated work they have done in working with the Iraqi High Electoral Commission to insure a fair, honest and successful election. U.N. Special Representative to Iraq, Ad Melkert, has directed these efforts.

The U.N. is fighting an uphill battle in this effort because this election is essentially under Iraqi control. The U.N. will have 13 teams of poll-watchers – not nearly enough with the thousands of polling places, each mandated to only handle a few hundred local registered voters. The international community will field approximately 600 monitors, and the EUROPEAN UNION will have 126 ‘observers’ in 14 provinces.

The Iraqi political parties and alliances will do their own monitoring. Fraud, abuse, vote-rigging and voter intimidation are expected, but on what scale remains to be seen. Violence has already increased, with the terrible bombings that occurred within the past days, targeting governmental buildings, civilians and voters on Thursday.

U.S. Embassy Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) have assisted the High Electoral Commission in advising and training election workers, in anticipation of this critical parliamentary election cycle. The U.S. military will stand by to assist the Iraqi security forces when help is requested, but our role and flexibility has diminished considerably since the last election. It’s a wait-and-see mission for us right now.

WHAT HAS CHANGED SINCE THE 2005 PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS?

For better or worse, the political landscape in Iraq has changed dramatically, and this election will be historic in ways that will either be successful or disastrous! Unlike the 2005 parliamentary election, this time the Sunnis will be actively engaged, with their own parties, alliances and candidates. If this election produces a wave of fraud and corruption charges, and Sunnis decide they have been cheated out of their rightful place within the government, the Sunni-led insurgency could be re-ignited in short order, and that would most likely plunge Iraq back into the kind of sectarian warfare that terrorized the country in 2005 and 2006.

The unresolved questions concerning KIRKUK and the disputed northern territories has disrupted the politics of Kurdistan, and greatly increased the tensions between Kurdistan and the Iraqi government. Were it not for U.S. forces in the area, most everyone believes that major clashes would have broken out between Iraqi Arab security forces and Kurdish peshmerga militias. The Kurdish vote will be unpredictable.

The Shiite community is now split down the middle!  Unlike 2005, when the vast majority of Shiites voted for the united alliance that won a majority in parliament and appointed al-Malaki as prime minister, this time they are lining up behind two major alliances and smaller Shiite/Sunni groups. This fracturing will prove to be critical in the coming weeks because it will insure that there are no major winners, and that new alliances must be forged before a functioning government can be formed.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Malaki has split off with his STATE OF LAW party, which is aligned with the Anbar Salvation Front, a Sunni party.

His menacing rival is the NATIONAL IRAQI ALLIANCE, which includes the Badr Brigade, Sadrists, the Islamic Virtue Party (Fadhilah) and the nefarious opportunist, Ahmed Chalabi, the career liar who feed the Bush administration the WMD disinformation that the Bush administration used to justify the war.

The greatest hope for democracy, secularism and sanity in Iraq is the IRAQ NATIONAL MOVEMENT, led by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.

It is predicted that no alliance will win enough of a parliamentary majority to form a government. The ensuing negotiations and maneuvering will drag out for weeks and weeks if not months, which is just what happened after the 2005 elections. The civil war broke out during those months of governmental paralysis, and it could happen again!

This time, there won’t be thousands of U.S. forces in the cities to insure some degree of security. This time the forces of sectarian violence and intimidation will have free reign to use violence to distort and manipulate the ultimate outcome of the election.

If al-Malaki is rejected as the next prime minister, will he go quietly, or will he resist, thus jumpstarting a Constitutional crisis? Will the security forces back him or remain neutral? Will the Sunnis reject the election results and take up arms again?

This election is a watershed moment for Iraq. Their future begins right now. Will democracy survive, or will sectarian and tribal violence once again rule the day?

Will 2010 be a year of hope for the Iraqi people, or a return to despair?