Iraq-It's the Economic Conditions not the Elections-CPA Orders Stand

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A Brief Guide to the Iraqi Elections
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Jo Wilding, Electronic Iraq, 29 January 2005



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.

3. None of the elected members of the National Assembly will represent a locality.
• Former US viceroy Paul Bremer decided the entire country should be a single constituency so the electoral system creates a national proportional representation.
• Anyone who gets a 275th of the vote will get a seat, regardless of how many others are elected from their city or province.
• The system creates a likelihood of over-representation at the national level for groups which turn out in high numbers. For example, in Kurdistan, where security is much better and people are more in favour of the elections, far more people are likely to vote, giving the Kurds greater representation than their numbers warrant. Of course, they were unrepresented, to all intents and purposes, for decades (thanks to Winston Churchill and all who followed him) but the solution isn't to simply shift the inequalities.
7. Certain parties and individuals have also been funded by the US.
• The International Republican Institute, an organisation linked to the US Republican party has been funding certain groups in their campaigning, giving a massive advantage.
• It is also believed to be organising the exit polls.
• It orchestrated, among other things, the coup in Venezuela.

8. Whoever wins, the occupation will go on.
• The US has built enormous bases in Iraq which it has no intention of withdrawing from.
• The US has already spent more than $100,000,000,000 on the war in Iraq – that's a hundred thousand million to most of us, a billion to the US. Bush is requesting another 80 thousand million dollars to carry on.
• US officials, mainly remaining anonymous, have made it abundantly clear that the elections are free only within the parameters set by the US government. The US is prepared to 'tolerate' a limited form of theocracy, according to one.
• Iraqi candidates are aware that there are 'red lines' as an unnamed Shia official put it – the election winners will not be at liberty to set any policy they choose.

The new government is already bound.
• The next plebiscite (on a permanent constitution) has to be held under Bremer's law too: any three of the eighteen governorates can veto the constitution, even if the constitution wins 90% of the total vote.
• It was unlawful for Bremer or the occupying powers to enact any laws, because an occupier is not allowed to change the laws of the country seized. Nevertheless, Bremer ruled, and the interim governing council signed into law, that everything in Iraq is to be privatised, open to 100% foreign ownership or at least foreign leasehold for forty years. That includes resources, amenities and public services.
• Because of the lack of security, little has yet been sold off but the law, though illegitimate, is expressed as binding on future governments.
• Iraq is the most indebted country in the world in terms of its debt to export ratio. Saddam's wars built up massive debts, now at $180 billion. Western countries and the IMF were happy too carry on funding Saddam with loans and to sell him weapons, including the chemical weapons and related hardware to attack the Kurds. Added to that are compensation claims ($30 bn) from the invasion of Kuwait, mainly 'owed' to incredibly wealthy oil companies and such like. Now, with the constant addition of compound interest throughout the sanctions, when Iraq was unable to pay off any debts at all, the debt is immense.
• The Paris Club and others have agreed to a package of debt relief which is linked to a programme of 'structural adjustment' whereby Iraq has to follow Argentina, Romania and others into disastrous policies of global capitalism. 30% of debt relief is unconditional, 30% depends on adopting a 'standard IMF policy' and 20% hangs on a three year review of implementation of the IMF policy. Iraq hasn't got any bargaining power to resist.
• Two of the IMF's conditions are the 'opening up' (read cheap sell off to Bush's pals) of the Iraqi oil industry and the rollback of the food ration, currently the only major social welfare programme, presumably because it means people with no money get stuff free instead of paying for it. The leading candidates have agreed to all this – that's why they got the money to become leading candidates.
• The debts left over after the promised, but conditional, relief are still more than enough to keep Iraq in servitude for many, many decades to come.

10. Iraq has no free press.
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