BAGHDAD: Iraqis held their most peaceful election since the fall of Saddam Hussein yesterday, voting for provincial councils without a single major attack reported anywhere in the country.
“The purple fingers have returned to build Iraq,” Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki said in a televised address after the polls closed, referring to the indelible ink stains on index fingers that show voters have cast their ballots.
The 2005 election took place amid a Sunni insurgency and was followed by a surge in sectarian slaughter between Sunnis and Shiites. That violence has dropped dramatically since 2007.
Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mohammed Al-Askary said of yesterday’s vote: “No security breaches took place during the election. Things went as we planned and as we hoped. I consider it a great success, like a wedding.”
Iraqi forces are determined to show they can keep security in the country as US troops begin to withdraw almost six years after the invasion to overthrow Saddam.
Al-Maliki, who claims credit for improving security, aims to use the election to build a power base in the provinces before national elections later this year. Sunni Arab groups who boycotted the last provincial elections hope to win a share of local power.
There was something of a holiday atmosphere in many parts of the country. In normally traffic-choked Baghdad, children took advantage of a ban on cars to play soccer in the streets.
“How can we not vote? All of us here have always complained about being oppressed and not having a leader who represented us. Now is our chance,” said Basra voter Abdul Hussein Nuri.
In the only reported incidents countrywide, mortar rounds landed in former dictator Saddam Hussein’s home town of Tikrit but no one was hurt, and Iraqi troops shot one person dead and wounded another after a quarrel in Baghdad’s Sadr City slum.
US forces killed two Iraqi police officers during a raid in Mosul in early morning before polls opened. The circumstances were not fully explained.
In addition, five candidates were assassinated in the run-up to the election — three just two days before the vote.
“Those who want to pull down the electoral process as a whole have just not been able to get off the ground. That ... is a very positive sign,” said Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at the University of London.
The 140,000 US troops in Iraq had patrols on the streets and helicopters in the sky but mostly kept a low profile. A US armored column was seen weaving down a Baghdad street between children and rocks placed in the road as makeshift soccer goals.
“So far, so good. The significance? Historic,” UN Special Representative Staffan de Mistura told Reuters at a polling station in a Baghdad school. “We have seen quite a flux of participants ... The rules have been applied quite strictly. I’ve also been seeing quite a good organizational system.”
Still, there were glitches. Thousands of people failed to find their names on voter registration lists and could not vote.
Just under 15 million of Iraq’s 28 million people were registered to vote for provincial councils that select powerful regional governors in 14 out of Iraq’s 18 provinces.
Three Kurdish provinces will vote separately, and the election was indefinitely postponed in the divided northern city of Kirkuk, a potential flashpoint, to avoid a showdown between Kurds and Arabs vying for control there.
Officials said counting would begin today with preliminary results not expected before Tuesday.
