AMMAN, 15 January 2005 — Iraqis abroad should use the facilities provided for voting in the Jan. 30 elections as democratic rule is the best answer to the violence of militants, the Iraqi politician Adnan Pachachi said yesterday. Pachachi spoke to about 250 Iraqi residents of Jordan in an Amman hotel where he was campaigning for his Independent Democrats Party, which has fielded a slate of 76 candidates for the elections. He was accompanied by Iraqi Planning Minister Mahdi Al-Hafidh, who is a member of the party.
There are about 350,000 Iraqis in Jordan; of whom 150,000 are eligible to vote in the elections. Pachachi served as Iraqi foreign minister before the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and is regarded as an elder statesman of Iraqi politics.
Last month, he called repeatedly for a postponement of the elections, arguing it would give time to address the concerns of Sunni Muslim leaders demanding a boycott. Pachachi is himself a Sunni. The Iraqi government has rejected any postponement of the elections. Pachachi yesterday condemned the violence in Iraq, saying it was the work of sectarian extremists who “consider democracy, and the reign of the people, as atheism and blasphemy.”
“If the issue were in their hands, they would establish a regime similar to the regime of the Taleban in Afghanistan,” Pachachi said, referring to that country’s hard-line Islamic government which was overthrown in 2001. “That is why I urge you all to go to the polling stations and elect the list which complies with your aspirations,” he said.
“If we stay in our homes we will have only ourselves to blame if something goes wrong. A big turnout is the only guarantee,” to end the foreign occupation of Iraq, said Pachachi, referring to the estimated 150-000 US-led troops in his country. Pachachi, a former foreign minister now in his 80s, spoke of insurgents fighting the US-led occupation in Iraq saying, “if we leave matters up to them they will set up a regime similar to the Taleban’s in Afghanistan”.
The Geneva-based International Organization for Migration is organizing expatriate voting on behalf of the Iraqi electoral commission in 14 countries, including Jordan, home to an estimated 150,000-200,000 Iraqis. The IOM estimates that up to one million Iraqis expatriates may be eligible to vote in Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Iran, the Netherlands, Sweden, Syria, Turkey, Britain, the United States, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan.
Up to 30,000 Iraqis are expected to vote in the elections in their war-torn country from Turkey, the Turkey branch of IOM said. Five hundred Iraqis have been trained to run and oversee polling stations in Britain to allow up to 150,000 expatriate Iraqis to cast their vote for the elections in Iraq, organizers said. The IOM said some 150,000 of the estimated 250,000 Iraqis living in Britain would be eligible to vote under a scheme that is also organized for Iraqi expatriates in 13 other countries.
