The fate of the Iraqi elections is fraught with uncertainty as the country remains divided over the election date. Omayma Abdel-Latif reports Posters are going up along the streets of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities bearing a message from Iraq's highest religious authority Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani to his followers. "The supreme religious authority has issued a fatwa (religious ruling) that Iraqis should cast their vote in the forthcoming election," reads the text that is printed next to a photo of the 80-year-old Sistani, along with a map of Iraq and the Iraqi flag. While Sistani's poster campaign is the most visible today in the cities and towns of Iraq, hundreds of other election-related posters and banners can be seen covering the walls and fluttering in the skies, reflecting the multiplicity of political groups and movements, many of which are arguably devoid of any real grassroots support. According to the Iraqi election commission, at least 212 Iraqi political parties and movements have registered to contest the forthcoming elections due to be held on 30 January, a number unprecedented in the history of the country. But, according to Iraqi writer Mohamed Al-Obeidy, this panoply of choices is less the reflection of a true democratic process than of the chaos that is Iraq under the occupation. According to Iraq's law of administration for the transitional period, the elections represent the second phase of the process of returning sovereignty to the Iraqi people. The law stipulates that elections to the 275-seat National Assembly should not be delayed beyond 31 January. This assembly will then draft a true Iraqi constitution. The second phase will come to an end with the formation of an Iraqi government pursuant to a permanent constitution. Under the law, the new government should be elected no later than December 2005. This "war of posters and banners", as one Iraqi politician puts it, is about the only visible sign that this is a country which is due to go to the polls less than eight weeks from now. The Iraqi electorate, who are still trying to come to terms with a ruthless US military machine working flat out to destroy what remains of ordinary life in the name of fighting "insurgents", are simply irrelevant to pre- election campaigning activities. Due to the worsening security situation, public activities such as rallies and meetings are as rare as gold dust. As a result, the Iraqi people are hardly aware of the electoral alliances being struck. Most political meetings are held behind closed doors, though access is granted to the country's newspapers. "This is a country still at war," said Saad Abdul-Razeq, a senior member of the Independent Democrats Movement (IDM) headed by veteran Iraqi politician Adnan Bachachi. "The prevailing atmosphere is one of uncertainty and apprehension, which means the conditions are not ripe for elections." That is precisely why the IDM, along with 16 other Iraqi political parties and groupings, signed a statement last Friday calling for the elections to be postponed for six months. Another important motive, according to Abdul-Razeq, was to give those Iraqi forces which have decided to boycott the elections time to reconsider their decision. "If this election is held and does not produce a government representative of the dominant Iraqi forces, then its legality will always be in question," he explained. The initiative, led by Bachachi, was meant to bring together all the Iraqi parties and movements which have threatened to boycott the political process in Iraq, so as to allow a national consensus to emerge over the election date. "The elections should be a first step towards national reconciliation, and not the issue which triggers new sectarian and ethnic conflicts," Abdul-Razeq told Al-Ahram Weekly. "Elections in Iraq should not be the endgame. The endgame is to put an end to the occupation and make a true national reconciliation possible." A meeting held in Dokan city in northern Iraq last week brought together the IDM along with the rest of the Iraqi forces, including the two main Kurdish parties, the Iraqi Islamic Party, the Iraqi Communist Party and many other political groupings. The meeting concluded by setting up a five- party committee comprising the Islamic Party, the Communist Party, a representative of the Kurdish parties, the Islamic Action Organisation and the IDM itself. This committee was established to negotiate an election delay with the interim government on behalf of all the political parties. The first meeting between the interim government and the committee took place last Monday, but the final fate of the elections remains unclear. Indeed, the interim government seemed to be deliberately leaving the door open to speculation. In statements to the London- based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper on Tuesday, Iraqi Planning Minister Mahdi Al-Hafez said that the issue will be further discussed in future meetings between the cabinet and the five-member committee. Contradictory statements from members of the interim government itself about the election delay revealed a division among Iraqi officials as to whether or not the elections should be held at the scheduled time. Iyad Allawi and most of his ministers voiced their support for proceeding with the elections as planned. Their stand was reinforced by a decision of the Iraqi National Assembly, which also insisted that the elections be held on time. Members of the predominant Shia political groupings, such as Al-Daawa Party and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, have dismissed the deteriorating security situation, saying it is not a valid excuse to postpone the political process. "There are no guarantees that security will be any better six months from now," Jawad Al-Maliki, a senior member of Al-Daawa, told reporters on Sunday. The US president, along with his ambassador in Iraq, also threw their weight behind the pro-election camp. Meanwhile, the most prominent Shia groups have been actively engaged in creating electoral alliances and unified lists in order to ensure a landslide victory. Some Shia figures, including Sistani himself, consider the January elections to be a historic opportunity to right an old wrong by engaging the Iraqi Shia in a political process from which they have so long been excluded. According to Ammar Al-Hakim, a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Sistani has already set up a committee whose aim is to draw up an electoral list approved by the religious authority, and which could possibly include Sunnis and Kurds. Nevertheless, Al-Hakim said it was going to be difficult to come up with a single list capable of eliciting a national consensus. Fears continue to grow that if the elections are boycotted by a large number of groups, this will only exacerbate existing sectarian tensions. As a result, many Iraqi politicians have issued calls for self- restraint and national dialogue. Muder Shawkat, a member of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), called on Sistani to sponsor a conference for national reconciliation ahead of the elections. Another attempt at defusing conflict came this week when Iraqi officials announced that premiere Allawi was to hold talks with members of the opposition in Jordan over the coming week. Although this could be interpreted as a sign that the pressure brought to bear on the interim government by the Sharm El-Sheikh summit was bearing fruit, very little information has emerged about the nature and composition of the "Iraqi opposition" with whom Allawi was to hold talks. Some news reports suggested that his interlocutors would include Baathists, tribal chefs and the Islamist parties. But there was still no confirmation on the part of the interim government as to who exactly Allawi was intending to negotiate with. Contrary to many Western press reports which depicted the debate over the election date as polarising Iraq along sectarian lines -- with the majority of Shia pro-election, while the Sunnis are pro-delay -- Iraqi political activist Mussa Al-Husseini told the Weekly that there were also large sections of the Shia population who are committed to boycotting the elections. Al-Husseini dismissed as superficial and simplistic the perception that all of Iraq's Shia were rallying around Sistani in his call to participate in the forthcoming elections. "We -- as Iraqi Shia -- find it strange that Sayid Sistani is so involved in such mundane political matters," said Al-Husseini. "The perception that all of Iraq's Shia population view these elections as a historic opportunity is completely wrong and misleading." Al-Husseini, who describes himself as a secular Shia, went on to point out that there are large numbers of Iraqi Shia who will boycott the elections despite Sistani's calls to go to the polls, because they believe that the whole process is merely a charade intended to bestow legitimacy on an illegitimate order. The Shia are too often characterised as a monolithic bloc, but Al- Husseini believes that there are leaders who have significant clout other than Sistani. "Al-Sadr has a large following, and Imam Jawad Al-Khalesi and Imam Al-Taé also enjoy grassroots support among large sections of the population. All of them have called for an election boycott. So the Iraqi Shia cannot be reduced to the followers of Sistani." And of course, there are also the secular Shia who belong to the Communist Party and other independent non-religious movements. "The real issue is not about a Sunni boycott versus Shia participation," Al- Husseini insisted. "It is about whether you are against the occupation and support the national resistance. And there are as many Shia as there are Sunnis in that camp." Statement by a group of Diaspora Iraqi writers, journalists and activists in support of the Iraqi parties which reject the election fraud We, the Iraqi writers, journalists and activists listed below, strongly believe that peace and security in our country can only be guaranteed through democratic frameworks and that free and fair elections are the only means to express our people's will and representation in government. We equally strongly condemn the massacres and atrocities perpetrated against our people under the pretext of preparing for election and implementing democracy, with the "interim government" acting as a cover for these daily war crimes: 1. We fully support the position of the patriotic groups and parties that met on 17 November 2004 at Um Al-Qura Mosque in Baghdad, and their decision to boycott the elections that the occupation forces and their local stooges intend to hold. We believe their aim is to falsify the will of the people and to legitimise perpetual occupation. 2. We demand that the "interim government", if it really wants fair elections, cease repression, murder and arrest of patriots who demand the end of occupation, allow free expression and release all those arrested. 3. We demand that the interim government cease covering up for the horrendous crimes of the occupation forces and stop representing the continued use of tanks and gunships in the country as a democratic necessity. 4. We ask for judicial commissions of integrity to be formed from local experts of all persuasions, including the armed and peaceful resistance forces, to formulate a new administrative law to replace the one imposed by the occupation for its own purposes and which sidelines the interests of our people. We also call for the formation of local commissions from persons of known integrity of different persuasions to supervise the elections, and for Arab, Islamic and international participation independent of the US occupation in a commission to oversee the process. We call on our people to be vigilant, to escalate their protest demonstrations and petitions, to appeal to the conscience of international public opinion, and to uphold the boycott of the fraudulent elections until their fairness is guaranteed. This statement was organised by Mussa Al- Husseini, coordinator of the Protest Movement against the Occupations and Fraudulent Elections. Iraqis only may add their signatures by writing to [email protected] or [email protected] .
