The provincial election results

LFIQ Chair Councillor Clive Furness examines the meaning of the provincial elections

In 14 of Iraq’s 18 provinces voters went to the polls at the end of January to choose between some 14,400 candidates for 440 local council seats. Each council had some 25 seats plus one for every 200,000 people in the local population. The three Kurdish provinces and the disputed Kirkuk province did not take part in the poll.

The polls clearly demonstrated enthusiasm, amongst potential politicians and parties if not the electorate as a whole. Of the 400 parties and individuals registered to contest the election, some 300 were not even registered at the time of the 2005 ballot. 4000 of the candidates were women competing for the 25% reserved places.

This was the first election to have international observers at every one of the 712 constituencies being contested.

51% of the electorate (of about 17m) voted and Prime Minister Maliki’s ‘State of Law’ coalition has been the major winner, becoming the dominant force in both Baghdad and Basra.

Two welcome themes seem to have emerged. Firstly, voters have moved away from sectarian identity politics. Only 20 of the 400 or so lists stressed an Islamist character. The nomenclature of the new parties is indicative of the way in which the mood of the nation is changing. Some 71 of the lists described themselves as ‘independent’, a further 69 described themselves as ‘national’ or ‘Iraqi.’ It is likely that some of these lists are simply re-branded Islamist lists, but the fact that they have felt the need to re-brand in such a ways as to remove their Islamist past is indicative of a wider change of attitude in the population as a whole.

This change in the electoral mood does seem to have filtered into the results. The Shi’ite Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), perceived to maintain close ties with Iran did not win a majority in a single province. In the holy city of Najaf they lost control to Maliki’s ‘State of Law’ coalition. Their share of the vote in Baghdad reduced from 55% in 2005 to just over 5%, in Basra it slipped from 49% to under 12%.

Clearly Maliki has gained popularity because of his ability to clamp down on Shi’ite militias and because of the improving security situation generally. But he has also sought to broaden his appeal, from a purely Shi’ite base (Dawa) to create a national and non-sectarian nature to the ‘State of Law’ coalition. His voter base, however remains concentrated in the Shia heartlands of the south and east.

The second theme is the inclusion of Sunni parties in the electoral process. The Sunni al-Hadbaa list, closely tied to ex-Baathists took nearly 50% of the vote in Nineveh province. One of the major beneficiaries in the Anbar province was the Awakening Council, which has built a political base on the back of the work it has done to combat domestic and foreign terrorist groups in Sunni areas of Iraq.

There are perhaps two reasons for the changes in voting patterns. Firstly, the religious parties have not performed particularly well in office and voters want delivery on basic services such as water, energy and transport. Secondly, sectarian violence engendered fear and people retreated to their own religious and ethnic groups for security. With increasing stability people are voting on the basis of their desires rather than from their fears. One can begin to hope that politics rather than violence will increasingly become the norm for the new Iraq.

There were some negative aspects to the elections. In the run up to the elections both politicians and electoral workers have been murdered in terrorist incidents. The only positive element to this was that the number of incidents was mercifully small.

Some people could not find their names on the electoral register, and though it was widely seen as performing well, there is still some work to be done by the Iraqi High Electoral Commission in generating an accurate register.

At 51% the voting was down on previous elections, but nonetheless this compares favorably with developed countries, such as the UK. In part this was because of the ban on the use of vehicles, to stop suicide bombers. The consequence was that some voters had to walk long distances to voting stations.

There have been allegations of vote rigging and some unease about the way in which some parties were able to spend large amounts of money on the campaign.

A full results list can be found at http://www.metimes.com/Security/2009/02/05/iraqi_election_results_are_in/d9a6/