Fraudulent elections (21 January 2005)

Published in Labour Left Briefing (February 2005)

No candidates, no polling stations and boycotted by a large proportion of the population: Glen Rangwala looks at Iraq’s ‘free elections’.

As the American forces were overrunning Baghdad in April 2003, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld confidently asserted “Over some period of months, the Iraqis will have their government selected by Iraqi people”. For over 20 months, the Iraqi people have been let down in every way by Rumsfeld’s plans: deprived not only of the opportunity to select their own government, but of basic goods, physical security, and self-respect. The elections held on 30th January will at last go some way towards keeping to one of the many broken promises that were made to the Iraqi people: a government will come to power that was not directly selected by US officials or those appointed by them. But, with the insurgency now a full-scale war in many parts of Iraq, how much really will change?

The most obvious problems with the elections are that a substantial part of the population does not recognise the legitimacy of holding them while the country is under full US occupation, and even more will be deprived of the opportunity to vote. Even those political groups based in the Sunni Arab community that had originally indicated their willingness to participate pulled out in mid-January when their request for a short delay was rebuffed. Their argument, which even US-appointed interim leader Iyad Allawi admitted was correct, is that the US-backed government will not be able to hold elections in various parts of the country. Allawi hasn’t been willing to reach compromises with local groups for elections to be held peacefully there, but has continued to endorse US attacks upon Iraqi towns.

As a result, very few of Iraq’s Sunni Arabs – less than a third, according to an unpublished US State Department survey – will vote. US actions are not encouraging them to participate either: Lt Col John Sattler, the senior US military commander in Iraq’s western al-Anbar province, claimed on 18th January that the 500,000 Iraqis there will be able to vote, but that he won’t release details of where the polling booths are until “the eleventh hour”. Thus the forces protecting them can’t be attacked – hardly a formula for a credible procedure.

Even for those Iraqis who can vote, many simply won’t know who they are voting for. For alleged security purposes, the names of candidates for election are not being released. All that voters will have is a list of party names. Iraqis who have lived in the country through sanctions and war have had no chance to engage with political movements except for Saddam Hussein’s. No parties other than the Ba’th were allowed before the invasion, and since then travel has been difficult and personal security awful. The largest popular political force to emerge and expand rapidly inside the country since then – Muqtada al-Sadr’s movement – has been effectively closed down by US forces. The only political party that has been able to advertise frequently on Iraqi television has been Allawi’s group, the Iraqi National Accord (INA), which has been funded by the US government for the past 14 years.

The failure of the US to make the elections meaningful to Iraqis is shown by the extent of misunderstanding about what the elections are for. According to a December poll in Iraq, most Iraqis believe the elections are for a president. Only 28% knew that they are for an assembly, which will appoint a figurehead president and a prime minister.

Allawi’s INA aside, the only other familiar party names have been encouraged to join up to form ‘lists’, organised on the basis of sectarian or ethnic identity. Groups, promoted intensely by the Shi’a clergy, have formed a joint slate called the Unified Iraqi Coalition. The main Kurdish parties have joined up to form a Kurdish Alliance List. So the Shi’a population will vote for the Shi’a list, the Kurds will vote for the Kurdish list, and as a result any new assembly will be wracked by inter-ethnic squabbling, with the Sunni Arab population left without effective representation. In this context, the potential for civil violence increases greatly: far from creating a new legitimate Iraqi government, as the US claims, the elections are likely to splinter Iraq even further.

For those reasons, it is difficult to imagine the elected assembly helping to create a stable Iraq from which the US and UK can peacefully exit. Instead, it’s more likely that the Coalition will end up promoting an authoritarian government which represses a fragmented Iraqi population on their behalf. One odd but instructive feature of statements by US and UK officials has been the mantra that these elections are “the first free elections Iraq has seen in 50 years”. They are referring to the elections of June 1954, held under the rule of the British-appointed strongman Nuri al-Sa’id. Like the 2005 version, those elections also led to the formation of an assembly. But Nuri only allowed the assembly to convene once, and he dissolved it completely nine days later. The repression by Nuri’s government, in league with the British, was all the more brutal afterwards. The same process, 50 years later, may well be at work again.

Author: Glen Rangwala

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