Can the voters build on success?

Iraq's elections

Feb 3rd 2005 BAGHDAD
From The Economist print edition

In four articles on Iraq's elections, we analyse the elections' achievement—and see why a new government will still struggle to impose itself, at home and abroad

“A GREAT day,” said the interim (and perhaps outgoing) prime minister, Iyad Allawi. “Absolutely delighted,” was the verdict of a usually dour American diplomat in Baghdad. Many Iraqi voters evidently shared such feelings, dancing in the streets, tossing sweets into polling stations, and waving two fingers, one dyed with supposedly indelible ink to prevent multiple voting, in a victory salute. Many said that the vote was a defeat for terrorism and that their sons and fathers murdered by Saddam Hussein had now been avenged. “I'm a suicide voter!” proudly declared one of the first citizens to cast a ballot in a Sunni district of Baghdad.

It was not all joy. At least 44 people, including 26 Iraqi civilians, eight Iraqi troops, ten British servicemen and one American soldier, are known to have been killed on election day. All told, across the country, insurgents launched a record 260 attacks, four times the current daily average, in an attempt to wreck the vote. There were around 100 attacks at or near polling stations, of which there were more than 5,300. Faced with a total ban on vehicle traffic throughout the country, the insurgents sent at least eight bombers on foot, wearing suicide vests, into voting stations. But no polling station was burned down or blown up.

As expected, the Sunni Arabs' turnout was small. Early estimates put it at 20-30%. It was almost non-existent in well-known trouble spots such as Ramadi, Fallujah and Samarra. But in mixed areas, in Sunni districts of Baghdad, in Mosul (a mixed city where the insurgency has been especially fierce of late), in tribal areas and in various places across the Sunni triangle, the vote was much higher than expected—though hundreds of thousands of voters in Sunni Arab areas either voluntarily boycotted the poll or were frightened away.

Certainly there were irregularities. Some polling-station officials made helpful suggestions as to which list voters should tick. In some areas, party toughs kicked rivals' poll-watchers out of the stations and tampered with the ballot boxes. Some Kurds discovered that the ink used to prevent double-voting was actually quite delible if you first dipped your finger in moisturising cream.

American army officers say that the insurgents were less effective than had been feared, for two reasons. First, they have recently lost many of their best men, including Baathist officers trained in guerrilla warfare. Many insurgents thrown into the fray to disrupt the election were apparently raw recruits. Second, the Iraqi security forces performed better than usual, perhaps because they too were inspired by the feeling that it was an historic opportunity for their compatriots to have a genuine choice at the ballot box for the first time in living memory. Just before election day, it was notable that many watching youths cheered when the tanks of the new army's first mechanised brigade, decked in national flags, rolled through central Baghdad, looking like a real fighting unit.

A sense of “taking back the streets” was visible on election day, especially in Baghdad. Even the Mahdi Army, the militia of the fiery Shia, Muqtada al-Sadr, who had discouraged his followers from voting without exactly telling them not to, helped keep order in Baghdad's slums, making it easier for citizens to go to the polls.

This mood of hope, almost euphoria, may explain why none of the big parties has complained about electoral irregularities. The worst organisational defect was a shortage of ballot papers in certain areas, especially in the Sunni Arab north; in Mosul, the papers twice ran out, according to Ghazi al-Yawar, a Sunni Arab with a tribal following who is the interim president and headed his own electoral list. But even the smaller parties, who lack toughs of their own and for whom a few thousand votes could make the difference, under the system of pure proportional representation, between getting a seat in parliament or not, have so far been fairly reluctant to shout foul.

Though full results may not be known for ten days after the poll, it is still considered most probable that the most votes have been cast for the United Iraqi Alliance, better known as “the Shia house”, “the clerics' list”, or simply “list 169” after its number on the huge ballot paper. Though Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most influential clergyman, did not formally endorse the list, his bearded visage was emblazoned on its posters.

Its two key components are two Islamist-inclined parties, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), led by a cleric, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, and the Dawa (“Call”) party, led by a doctor, Ibrahim al-Jaafari. In the run-up to the poll, both parties sought to soften their Islamist tinge (and especially SCIRI's close ties with Iran) in a bid to reassure Iraq's many secular-minded Shias that they do not intend to turn Iraq into an Iranian-style theocracy. Some of its posters even featured attractive unveiled women.

The rival Iraqi List, headed by the secular-minded Mr Allawi, may also have done well. Many Sunni Arabs seem to endorse his wish to rebuild a strong army and see him as a bulwark against an Iranian takeover, while members of both main Muslim sects like his sturdy leadership style—“like Saddam but with justice”, as a Sunni voter put it.

Provided that the clergy-backed United Iraqi Alliance does not win an outright majority, which some of its adherents are predicting, some frenzied horse-trading is likely to take place in the next few weeks, as parties jockey for a place in a ruling coalition. Mr Allawi's list and the Kurdish Alliance, which is sure to have swept up most Kurdish seats, may well hold the balance. But even Communists and monarchists may play a pivotal part.

The next step is for the 275-seat assembly to choose, by a two-thirds majority, a three-person presidential council (a president and two deputies) which in turn must unanimously choose a prime minister within a month of the election. The assembly must then endorse a prime minister and his chosen government.

All the main parties say they will ensure that Sunni Arabs are well represented, both in government and in the committees due to draft a constitution. This should be ready in mid-August, endorsed in a referendum in mid-October, and pave the way to another general election, under new rules, in December. But only if Sunnis are seen to have a proper say is there a chance that the new government, especially in the four worst affected of Iraq's 18 provinces, will start to contain the still raging insurgency.

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