Brief Guide To The Iraqi Elections

[BobMorr]

http://www.wildfirejo.org.uk/feature/display/145/index.php


Iraqi people fought for the right to have this election and forced the occupying powers into allowing them. This is how the US has distorted the process to try to turn elections to its advantage.

1. Iraqis are voting not for a party or an individual but for a list.
• There are a very few individuals and parties standing as such but the majority are part of lists. There is, for example, a ‘main Shia list’ and several other Shia lists, some Kurdish lists, and so on.
• The lists contain, between them, over 7000 candidates, many of whom are not even named for security reasons.
• That means people are more or less compelled to vote not according to the credibility or policies of a person or party but for an ethic group, a national group or a religious faction.

2. Iraqi people have no opportunity to elect their president or prime minister.
• The elections will create a 275 member National Assembly which will select a 3 member presidency council, which in turn will select a prime minister. It’s assumed, but nowhere stated in the ‘transitional law’ that these selections would come from among the 275 elected members.

more at link

[BrklynLiberal]

1. Also check out www.juancole.com

[Kolesar]

2. He has some other good material at his website

The author lived in Iraq last year.