[Shadow_Group] Iraqi Officials to Allow Vote by Expatriates

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Iraqi Officials to Allow Vote by Expatriates
By EDWARD WONG
Published: November 5, 2004

FROM:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/international/middleeast/05expats.html?8bl<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/international/middleeast/05expats.html?8bl>
AGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 4 - Iraqi electoral officials said
Thursday they would allow millions of Iraqis outside
the country to vote in the coming election. The
decision, made after weeks of anguished debate,
appeared certain to increase tensions among the
minority Sunni Arabs here, because most Iraqi
expatriates are believed to be Shiites.

"We've decided to allow Iraqis abroad to vote, and the
mechanism will be worked out in the coming days," said
Adel al-Lami, a supervisor for the Independent
Electoral Commission of Iraq, charged with organizing
the country's first democratic elections, scheduled
for January. "The voting will take place in those
countries with a large number of Iraqis." Those 18 and
older will be eligible, he added. 

The United Nations and the United States had
recommended strongly against allowing expatriate
voting because such polling is notoriously difficult
to organize and because the process is more prone to
irregularities and charges of fraud. Such problems
arising could threaten the legitimacy of the election,
United Nations and American officials said.

But leading Shiite and Kurdish politicians, as well as
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most powerful
Shiite cleric in Iraq, strongly supported expatriate
voting. 

Carlos Valenzuela, the leader of the United Nations
electoral advisory team, said the dangers had been
made clear to them. "We've told them from point one
that it's a very risky business,'' he said. "People
don't realize the potential implications of this.
They're huge - practical, logistical, political. And
all this has to be done in the time frame allotted."

The commission must still determine the procedure for
expatriate voting, as well as where it will be
allowed, which is a politically charged issue. It must
also secure a relatively large budget for the polling.


Many Iraqis fled in the 35-year rule of the
Sunni-dominated Baath Party and Saddam Hussein. Two
million to four million are now living abroad - about
half of them over 18 - with some of the biggest
concentrations in Britain, the United States and Iran.


Those voters could account for up to 15 percent of the
total in January, when Iraqis are to elect a
275-member national assembly. 

The assembly will then install an executive government
and draft a permanent constitution. Direct elections
for a full-term government are planned for the end of
2005. 

The big Shiite political parties lobbied hardest to
allow expatriate voting, with Ayatollah Sistani
issuing strong statements of support for the idea in
recent weeks. After hundreds of years of minority rule
by Sunnis in the region, leaders of the Shiites, who
make up 60 percent of Iraq's population, are jockeying
for maximum advantage in the elections.

The main Kurdish parties and some leading former
exiles, including the interim prime minister, Ayad
Allawi, also supported expatriate voting. They have
distinct constituencies abroad and are more secular
than most Iraqi parties, which could allow them to
appeal to expatriate voters across ethnic and
religious lines. The challenges involved in setting up
polling outside Iraq will be formidable and, by some
accounts, overwhelming. The United Nations strongly
advised the Iraqi electoral commission over the
summer, during training in Mexico City, that
out-of-country voting should not be permitted, Mr.
Valenzuela said. The United Nations even flew in
experts at the time to comment.

The decision of where to allow voting will almost
certainly be seen as highly political, and there will
probably be accusations of discrimination in many
cases, Mr. Valenzuela said. For example, although many
Iraqis live in Shiite-dominated Iran, the idea of
allowing expatriates there to vote is likely to draw
sharp criticism from many corners, particularly Sunni
Arabs, who lost their power with the fall of Mr.
Hussein. American officials say one of the goals of
holding elections is to dampen the Sunni-led
insurgency by getting Sunnis to take part in the
process of creating a government.

Many Iraqis also hold a strong distrust of the Iranian
government because of the bloody eight-year war Iraq
fought with Iran in the 1980's, a sentiment that will
no doubt cast a shadow on votes from Iran. 

But powerful Shiite parties like the Supreme Council
for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq will almost
certainly lobby for the inclusion of expatriate votes
from Iran. That group was founded in 1982 by an Iraqi
ayatollah who had fled to Iran. 

Financing the vote and organizing a system for the
voting present serious logistical problems. Mr.
Valenzuela said out-of-country polling costs
considerably more per voter than in-country polling. A
Western diplomat, who agreed to speak on the condition
of anonymity, estimated that organizing expatriate
voting would cost "millions and millions" of dollars
and said that American officials here had relayed
their disapproval to the United Nations.

Mr. Lami acknowledged that the commission did not have
financing yet for the outside polling.

He said the 40 or so Iraqi Embassies now open could
help organize voter registration and polling, and the
United Nations could help in countries without
embassies.

Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister and a
senior official in the Kurdistan Democratic Party,
which supported expatriate voting, said in an
interview he was ready to throw all the resources of
Iraq's embassies into the effort. "I lived many years
abroad, and I believe it's critical," he said.

But Mr. Valenzuela and the Western diplomat said the
embassies were underequipped. Besides, they argued, it
would be politically suspect to use the resources of
the interim Iraqi government. 

The United Nations also has no mandate to help conduct
expatriate polling, Mr. Valenzuela said. 

Out-of-country voting has taken place in elections in
nations like Afghanistan and East Timor. But in those
cases, the outside polling was limited to only a few
countries because, unlike Iraqi, expatriates were
clustered more tightly. Expatriate polling took place
in Pakistan and Iran during the recent Afghan
elections, and in a mere half-dozen countries,
including Portugal and Indonesia, in the case of East
Timor. 

Mr. Valenzuela said the Iraqi commission might
outsource the job of setting up outside polling to a
group like the International Organization for
Migration, which has ties to the United Nations.

In recent weeks, the two biggest Shiite parties here,
the Dawa Islamic Party and the Supreme Council, both
in exile during Mr. Hussein's rule, made intense pleas
to the electoral panel to allow expatriate votes.

Adnan Ali, a deputy in the Dawa Party, said in an
interview that Shiite officials had threatened a
boycott of the elections. "The Shia might withdraw
completely," he said. "That's a serious threat. We
said, 'If you don't include those votes, you're
pushing us to the red line.' "

It was unclear what role such threats played in the
commission's decision. Not participating would cost
Shiites dearly, since they would lose the chance to
take power through legitimate means. Though outspoken
on the issue of expatriate votes, Ayatollah Sistani
has insisted that his top priority is to make sure the
elections take place on time.




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