Posted on 01/31/2005 12:36:18 AM PST by Capn TrVth
Aljazira bemoans illligitimate Iraqi Election: “Bait and Switch” -Shades of Florida / Ohio. Disenfranchisements2.0 Chad will hang. See full article below.
By Carl Conetta
Al-Jazeerah, January 2005
The balloting due to take place on 30 January will not fulfill the promise of democracy nor satisfy the Iraqi passion for self-determination. This, due to insecurity, voter confusion, secrecy, and the systematic favoritism afforded some candidates and parties over others. These problems attest to the fact that the US mission has failed to create the necessary foundation for a democratic process. As a result, the balloting will not fairly convey the balance of interests and opinion in Iraqi society. Nor will it unite the country, quiet dissent, or channel opposition along avenues of peaceful political compromise. Indeed, as currently designed, the election is little more than a “bait and switch” ploy: Iraqis will go to the polls expecting to achieve one thing while actually legitimizing something quite different.
While failing as an exercise in democracy, the election will succeed in one respect: it will confer greater international legitimacy on the Bush administration’s project in Iraq. And this will allow a more vigorous prosecution of the counter-insurgency war – which, at any rate, has become the principal public rationale for proceeding with the balloting. Weeks ago, the administration fell back to this second line of rationalization, conceding that the election was “flawed” – flawed but still vital to the counter-insurgency effort. In fact, the election is more than simply flawed. It is part of a counterfeit process that will impede the development of a truly sovereign and stable Iraq.
Factors affecting the vote
The immediate outcome of the Iraqi election will be shaped by two factors – neither of which has anything to do with the “will of the people”.
First, confusion will fog the voters’ choices. This is partly due to the structure of the voting process – which has all Iraqis voting for all Assembly seats – and due to the composition of the ballots. Also, insufficient time and resources have been devoted to party development, voter education, and electoral support. Iraqi voters will face 100 choices on the national ballot with no firm basis to accurately distinguish among them.
Second, the expatriate parties favored by the United States will enter the election contest with overwhelming advantages in resources and organization. This will give them an incomparable capacity to elevate their candidates above the chaos entangling their competitors.
Among the advantages granted to America’s favored parties are the powers of office and incumbency. This gave them 18 months to build name recognition, patronage networks, and power bases. The favored parties also have benefited from having more access to outside technical support and financing. And, as government parties, they have had easy access to the media, which is especially important given the security situation. Finally, the expatriate parties have benefited from two policy decisions: The decision to give immediate voting rights to all Iraqi expatriates living outside the country and the decision to treat the entire country as a single electoral district. These redress the expatriates’ most serious weakness: their lack of local roots.
Due to their accumulated advantages, the expatriate and former government parties will be able to thoroughly dominate the 30 January election.
The Iraqi electorate may be expecting a big change in policy. Opinion polls clearly show that most Iraqis do not trust their current, appointed government and now want a quick end to the occupation. What Iraqis are likely to get, however, is a warmed-over version of the status quo. The new government will prominently involve many of the same leaders and parties that the United States has advanced since it took control of Iraq. And the occupation will not end. Indeed, no firm, near-term withdrawal date will be set.
The structural bias of the electoral system and the effects of poor security will give the more than 6,000 losing candidates reason enough to question the election result. Also prompting suspicions will be the secrecy that has surrounded the election, the paucity of independent foreign monitors, and the relatively low number of local observers. Election skeptics will find further fuel for their suspicions in the October revelation of CIA plans to covertly assist Washington’s favored candidates and parties.
The Sunni problem
The election will see the fortunes of the Shi'i and Kurdish communities advance -- albeit to less real effect than they might hope. For the Sunni community, by contrast, the election lacks even the veneer of progress.
Sunni disaffection with the election process has been especially broad and acute for two reasons:
First, the electoral system set up in June 2004 by the Coalition Provisional Authority does not offer Iraq’s regions representation in government proportionate to their populations. Unlike the system in the United States, assembly seats are not rooted to local districts. This means that their relative representative weight is always up for grabs. For minorities, this poses the possibility of seeing their representative power reduced to insignificance. It is all a question of relative voter turnout and mobilization. This bothers Kurds as much as it does Sunnis, but the Kurds have made a separate peace, gaining an autonomous region.
The second source of Sunni disaffection has to do with laws that impede the full participation of former Ba'ath Party members in the electoral process. Tens of thousands must jump special hurdles in order to run for office. And none of the estimated 1.5 million former members are eligible to become Prime Minister or to join the Presidency Council. This, regardless of their actual culpability in Saddam’s crimes. No proof is needed, beside a membership card. (In Iraq during the Hussein years, as in many former communist countries, advancement in public institutions and in many professions had required party membership). The only exception to this might be called the “Allawi rule”: those former Ba'athists who left the party ten or more years ago are allowed to rule.
Ba'ath Party membership was disproportionately Sunni. More than ten percent of Sunnis were members. So, these measures have a big impact on the Sunni community. They create a powerful constituency for boycott or worse, and they feed a broader sense among Sunnis that the new order is not for them. To avoid similar outcomes, other recent transitional societies – in the east and in southern Africa – have chosen to abstain from imposing broad-brush sanctions on members of former government parties.
The real target of Administration policy in Iraq is not Sunnis, of course. Nor is it simply terrorists, foreign jihadists, (resistance fighters), or “Former Regime Elements”. The real target is both and equally Arab Nationalism and political Islam. That Shi'i fundamentalists have advanced in the new order is purely a tactical convenience that, given time, will be set right.
In the meantime, Iraq’s seemingly intractable woes and divisions give the Bush administration considerable leverage in dealing with the new Assembly – as does the powerful US position inside the country. Indeed, the only truly powerful political institution in Iraq is the US mission: its resources, organizational capacity, and armed might far surpass those at the disposal of the Iraqi government. Even the remarkable failures of economic reconstruction now rebound to the advantage of the mission, which still sits on $16 billion in undisbursed funds. These circumstances make the Bush administration confident that regardless of who gets the most votes on 30 January, it will be the winner.
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This commentary is abstracted from a longer report, The Iraqi election “bait and switch”: Faulty poll will not bring peace or US withdrawal, Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Report #17, available at: http://www.comw.org/pda
Carl Conetta is the co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives, a defense policy analysis project located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Washington DC.
Denny Crane: "I want two things. First God and then Fox News."
Denny Crane: "I want two things. First God and then Fox News."
Read in the Seatle paper that Zogby, our old friend, compares this vote to 1860 in the US. It set up the civil war. Where is that safe that falls from the sky in cartoons? We could use a little Norden like strategic safe dropping right about now.
I don't think aljazeerah believes their own lies.
Anti-democracy propaganda.
Pure and simple.
Al Jazeera sounds curiously like Democrat Underground.
That's a wonderful picture, too.
Like I said, Al Jazeera sounds curiously like Democratic Underground.
In Amman, Jordan, Iraqis freed by America, many with tears in their eyes from the shock of freedom, show off their fingers stained with blue ink, joining millions freed by President Bush and America.
What's funny is that the article was written by a guy named Carl. :P
Probably an administrator at Democrat Underground.
That one's OUTSTANDING..wow. where is that from ( Yahoo)?
Sounds like Carl Conetta is an irrelevant leftist pessimist who drinks everything in a glass half full. I love it when the public gets so sick of the nay sayers, and tune them out completely. Thank God, that time has finally arrived!
Follow the money. Forget Al Jeerzeera and instead look at the author. Conetta's way is paid for by the "Proteus Fund". Just look at the board of directors at that thing. Way to the left, including the executive director of Barbara Streisand's "philanthropy". Pure, undiluted left wing spin.
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