[Shadow_Group] Shiites Reject Election Delay - Iraq

[shadowgroup-l at lists.resist.ca]

THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
Shiites Reject Election Delay
November 28, 2004
The majority sect's political and religious leaders
say the Iraqi election must be held Jan. 30, despite
Sunni and Kurd objections.
By Ashraf Khalil, Times Staff Writer

FROM:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraqelect28nov28,1,3626681.story?coll=la-headlines-world<http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraqelect28nov28,1,3626681.story?coll=la-headlines-world>
BAGHDAD - Shiite Muslim political and religious
leaders insisted Saturday that Iraq's parliamentary
election must be held as scheduled in January,
rejecting calls from Sunnis and ethnic Kurds to
postpone the landmark vote six months.

The Shiites' position bolsters the interim government
and U.N.-appointed electoral commission, which said
Saturday they intended to proceed with balloting on
Jan. 30.

The deepening debate over the election date is
threatening to aggravate sectarian tensions in a
nation already fractured by a raging insurgency that
has killed more than 1,230 U.S. troops and many more
Iraqis.

The prospect of a delay has outraged leaders of Iraq's
Shiite majority, who view the vote as a decisive means
of political empowerment after decades of repression
by the long-dominant Sunni minority.

Jawad Maliki, a senior official with the Dawa Party,
one of the principal Shiite groups, said any
postponement would violate the country's interim
constitution and diminish the credibility of the
political process. It would also embolden insurgents,
he said.

"It is a message to the terrorists that they are
victorious," Maliki said. "This will encourage them."

A joint statement released Saturday by 42 parties,
including Dawa and the Supreme Council for Islamic
Revolution in Iraq, another key Shiite party, said any
delay would be illegal.

A spokesman for Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Said Hakim,
one of the nation's most prominent clerics and a
member of the Shiite religious leadership headed by
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, also said a delay was
unacceptable.

Elections are "the most legitimate way on the
international level to express the will of the
people," said Hakim's son, Mohammed Hussein Hakim.
"All parties have agreed on this date, and we cannot
take back this position for any reason."

A diverse collection of political groups requested the
six-month delay after meeting in Baghdad on Friday.

Participants in the gathering, arranged by elder
statesman Adnan Pachachi, included Sunni religious
parties, tribal groups and a women's organization.
Also attending were the two largest Kurdish political
parties, both longtime U.S. allies who until recently
had endorsed holding elections as scheduled.

Insurgent attacks and shaky government control over
large areas of the country - along with fears of a
broad boycott by Sunni groups - were cited as primary
reasons for requesting the delay.

Organizers acknowledge that violence in predominantly
Sunni areas north and west of the capital has
seriously delayed election preparations. Voter
registration efforts, scheduled to begin Nov. 1,
haven't even started in Al Anbar province, home to
Fallouja, Ramadi and other cities where insurgents
have been strong.

In Mosul, a northern city where insurgents continue to
make regular shows of strength, a warehouse full of
registration forms was set ablaze this month.

Despite the violence, U.S. Ambassador John D.
Negroponte said Saturday that elections could be held
on time.

During a visit to Fallouja, where he viewed the
large-scale destruction from the recent U.S.-led
offensive to retake the city from insurgents,
Negroponte predicted that even Al Anbar province would
be secure enough to hold an inclusive vote.

"National elections will be taking place on 30 of
January next year, and we want to do everything
possible to create the conditions so that everyone who
is eligible to vote in this country will be able to do
so," Negroponte said.

Thair Nakib, a spokesman for interim Prime Minister
Iyad Allawi, said Saturday that the government was
"determined to hold elections on time." He shrugged
off Friday's request for a delay as a healthy sign of
a newly democratic society.

Allawi, Nakib said, "hears [the parties'] opinion and
expresses his own opinion to them."

Iraq's electoral commission said that it was still
working toward the Jan. 30 date and that it did not
have power to postpone the vote even if it wanted to.

"Legally, to be frank, we don't have that ability,"
said commission chief Hussein Hindawi, who added that
any delay would have to be discussed by the
commission, interim government, interim National
Assembly and United Nations.

If the government insists on holding to the Jan. 30
date and many parties decide to boycott, the vote
could be viewed as illegitimate by much of the Iraqi
population.

A spokesman for Pachachi's Independent Democratic
Movement said Friday that it would participate in a
January vote if necessary. But Tariq Hashemi of the
Iraqi Islamic Party, the country's largest Sunni
religious party and a longtime proponent of a delay,
would not rule out the possibility of a boycott.

In an interview with Al Jazeera, an Arabic-language
satellite news channel, Hashemi said that "everything
will be open to discussion" if the vote proceeds in
January.

Either way, election organizers say they face a
monumental task.

"I'm pleasantly surprised that we haven't come off the
rails to date," said an electoral expert with
experience in Iraq, speaking on condition of
anonymity.

Still, he said, a six-month delay wouldn't necessarily
improve the chances of success as long as the
insurgency continues.

"In conditions of this kind of violence, these
elections are going to be very deeply flawed," he
said. "They might still be worthwhile if they lead to
the creation of a somewhat more acceptable, somewhat
more legitimate government which is able to peel away
some of the support of the extremists."

Although Allawi has said Iraq will hold to the Jan. 30
date, the stance of his party, the Iraqi National
Accord, has remained fuzzy.

Senior INA official Hani Idrees said Allawi and his
party would not support a delay unless there was a
broad national and international consensus for it.
However, the presence of an INA representative at
Friday's conference fueled speculation that Allawi was
trying to build support for a postponement.

Nakib, the government spokesman, said the INA
representative attended only "to hear the opinion of
the other parties" and did not sign off on the
postponement request.

Last week, Minister of State Adnan Janabi, a senior
INA official and close Allawi advisor, caused waves by
endorsing a postponement.

At first, Janabi's statement was taken by many as a
sign of dissension within the interim government. But
the election expert said Janabi's comments now seem
like an effort to bring the issue out into the open
without leaving the prime minister politically
vulnerable.

Allawi himself could benefit from a delay.

A longtime exile with questionable grass-roots
support, he presumably could use an extension to
consolidate power within the government.

The position of the two main Kurdish parties, the
Kurdish Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan, may prove critical in the debate. As
recently as last week, both endorsed sticking to the
election schedule enshrined in the interim
constitution.

Their change of position lends crucial momentum to the
pro-delay camp and is likely to be regarded among
Shiites as a betrayal. Maliki, of the Dawa Party, said
he was "surprised" by the Kurds' change of heart.

Iraq's Kurdish and Shiite political groups have, at
times, viewed each other with intense distrust.

The Kurds are largely Sunni, but as an ethnic minority
they were victimized under Saddam Hussein's regime.
Some Kurdish politicians regard the Shiite parties as
vehicles for Iranian influence in Iraq.

Kurds could benefit from a delay in the election,
particularly in consolidating their claim to the
oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk.

Many Kurds view Kirkuk as a future capital and
economic heart of a long-desired independent Kurdish
state. Since the fall of Hussein, Kurds have worked to
establish demographic dominance over the Kirkuk
region. Thousands of displaced Kurds who were forcibly
relocated by Hussein have flooded in and forced out
Arab residents.

--------------------------
Times staff writers Raheem Salman and Suheil Affan in
Baghdad, special correspondent Saad Saadik in Najaf,
and Times wire services contributed to this report.







-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.resist.ca/pipermail/shadowgroup-l/attachments/20041129/4a2735b4/attachment.html>