As the people of Iraq prepare to hold their first free elections, an international chorus is calling for the polls to be postponed.
The chorus includes the “usual suspects” who are still sore that Saddam Hussein is in jail, awaiting trial, rather than in power, killing people and distributing largesse.
The first noises about postponement came from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan who dropped hints that his outfit might not supervise the elections. Those noises found an echo in Paris where Iraq is sill seen as a “quagmire”. Some elements in the American Democrat Party, though not Sen. John Kerry himself, have also made similar noises, mostly in the hope of presenting Iraq as another “Bush failure.”
What are the arguments for postponing the election?
The first argument is that Iraq, having held no free elections ever, lacked a proper electoral register. Over the past year, however, the Iraqis have managed to build a register based on the census data of 1989 and the lists established by the United Nations for the oil-for-food program in the mid-1990s. Today, even Ambassador Jahangir, the UN’s special envoy in Baghdad, says the register is “solidly based.”
The second argument was based on the claim that no constituency boundaries existed, and that extensive gerrymandering could falsify results. That argument, too, is no longer relevant because, under the method chosen for the election, the whole of Iraq is considered as a single constituency. This means that candidates have to form coalitions and submit party lists. The future assembly’s seats will then be allocated on the basis of proportional representation.
The method chosen is the best because next January’s election is for a constituent assembly, whose task is to write a new constitution for submission to the people in a referendum. The method provides the possibility of presenting a single list of national unity, reflecting Iraq’s ethnic and religious diversity, and committed to a pluralist system. Later, the single-member constituency method could be introduced for parliamentary elections.
The third argument is the one most often aired these days. It goes something like this: terrorist attacks, especially suicide-bombings, make it impossible to organize the poll in several localities. Translated into practical politics this argument is nothing but a call for transferring the initiative to terrorists who have stated that their chief goal is to prevent any elections in Iraq. In other words, we are invited to let enemies of democracy decide when and how Iraq should have an election.
This is not the first time that the “postponement party” calls on the Iraqi people and the US-led coalition to, in effect, surrender to the terrorists.
There were calls to postpone the formation of the Governing Council, the holding of municipal elections, the formal end of the occupation, the creation of the interim government, and the setting up of an interim legislature. But every time what had to be done was done on schedule, and the skies did not fall.
Annan’s claim that because some Iraqis might not be able to vote, none should do so, is hard to support.
There are several examples of elections held while part of a country’s population was unable to participate. In Colombia almost a quarter of the national territory has been out of central government control in the past two decades. But that did not prevent Colombia from holding democratic elections in the teeth of terrorist opposition.
In India several local and national elections were held while some areas, notably Nagaland, Mizoram, Punjab, and Kashmir suffered from terrorism at different times and in different forms.
When the UN organized the East Timor elections almost a quarter of the population were still refugees in the Indonesian part of the island. In the second half of the 1990s Algeria held several municipal, parliamentary and presidential elections on schedule despite the fact that terrorism made polling difficult in parts of the country.
What is the percentage of Iraqis that might not be able to vote because of terrorist threat? At the time of writing, Iraqi authorities, including Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, believe that proper polling might not be possible in four localities: Fallujah, Baqubah, Samarra and the so-called “Revolutionary City” suburb of Baghdad.
Of these, the first three, located in the so-called “Sunni Triangle”, account for a total population of 320,000 which means around 180,000 possible voters. The fourth locality, predominantly Shiite, is estimated to have some 200,000 possible voters. Taken together, the potential voters in the four localities represent around five percent of those eligible to vote under the established electoral roll.
But even then, voters in the four localities could always leave for the day and vote in nearby towns or villages where there is no terrorist threat. This is possible because, as already mentioned, the whole country is treated as a single constituency.
To be sure, it is important that voter participation in next January’s election be as massive as possible. But voter participation is not the sole criterion for judging the value of an election.
The average voter turnout for the 20 Western “mature democracies” is just over 60 percent.
In the United States that rate is, in fact, just above 50 percent for registered voters and below 50 percent when non-registered potential voters are taken into account.
In the most recent local and European elections in the European Union countries, average voter participation fell below 25 percent.
In Algeria’s’ most recent presidential election just over 40 percent of the electorate took part. And yet, international observers described it as the country’s “cleanest and most authentic” elections ever.
By contrast voter participation rate in most of the “elections” held during the Soviet era was above 99 percent. Arab leaders routinely usually win with 99.99 percent of the votes. Saddam Hussein won his last presidential term with 100 percent of the votes in an “election” that had attracted 100 percent of voters.
What matters today is that the number of Iraqis who want elections, and want it as fast as possible, is many times higher than those who are trying to prevent it. Almost all ethnic Kurds, accounting for some 20 percent of the population, want elections. The overwhelming majority of Shiites, some 60 percent of the population, also want elections as repeatedly demanded by Grand Ayatollah Ali-Muhammad Sistani. The largest Arab Sunni parties and the parties representing Christian, Yazidi and Turcoman minorities also want urgent elections.
Iraq today is the main battleground between the forces of reform and pluralism on the one hand and those of terror and tyranny on the other. The former demand elections as a means of establishing a new criterion for legitimacy. The latter fear elections because they regard violence as the sole sources of legitimacy.
President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, and their allies have promised to help the people of Iraq freely choose their system of government, and those who govern them. They cannot renege on that promise because Kofi Annan might be chagrined or because Republican Party pollsters might want less “bad news” from Iraq until after the presidential election in November.
The coalition must take action to flush the terrorists out of the “no-go” areas they have been allowed to set up. There is still time to create conditions in which all Iraqis would be able to vote.
