The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> A small step on a long road

A small step on a long road
Posted by Tiglath (Guest) - Wednesday, February 4 2009, 8:03:04 (CET)
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By Benjamin Isakhan


While history has certainly been made by an African American moving into the White House, spare a thought for the people of Iraq this week who take another small step on the long and arduous road to democracy.

The January 31 elections for 14 of Iraq's 18 local governorates are unlikely to attract celebrity endorsements, multi-million dollar campaigns or tickertape parades - but this doesn't make them any less historic or democratic.

These important elections are designed to replace the local councils brought to power in January 2005 and to pave the way for several important referendums and elections to be held across Iraq in 2009. These include a referendum concerning the scheduled withdrawal of coalition forces and another to resolve the contested status of Kirkuk.

Following this, further local elections are to be held in the remaining four Northern provinces before the federal election of December this year.

There are, rightly, several political and security concerns about these forthcoming elections and every step towards democracy must be taken cautiously in this complex and volatile nation. Nonetheless, the early signs indicate that they will be a marked improvement on the already successful elections of 2005.

For example, demonstrating the enormous interest in the practise and proliferation of democracy in Iraq, more than 400 parties and 14,500 Iraqi candidates have registered to compete for only 440 provincial seats.

Unlike the 2005 elections, the government of Iraq has deemed it safe enough for the candidates name, rather than just their political affiliation, to appear on the ballot and allowed them to openly campaign in public. This has seen colourful campaign posters glued to walls all over Iraq and party volunteers handing out leaflets at security check-points.

Others are using more traditional tactics such as going door-to-door, doing radio interviews or calling public assemblies where ordinary citizens are invited to grill leading candidates on their policies.

Another improvement has been the fact that the Iraqi government has banned political endorsements from religious figures. Many candidates have therefore been forced to run on policy rather than religious rhetoric. It has also meant that Iraq might well be moving beyond politics conducted along ethno-religious sectarian lines and thereby encouraging more secular approaches to issues such as religious law and national unity.

These elections also ensure marginally improved representation for Iraq's many small minority groups and more than 25% of the candidates are women according to one UN report.

Similarly, the Sunnis of Iraq who found themselves disenfranchised by their electoral abstinence in 2005 are expected to turn out in droves this time around and are likely to win a more significant proportion of the seats.

But the most significant improvement is the fact that the forthcoming elections are the first to be have been co-ordinated by the Iraqis themselves. They are not the result of external pressure or an arbitrary timetable; they are Iraqi elections that were designed, deliberated over and implemented by the democratically elected government of Iraq.

There are at least three significant aspects to these important developments. Firstly, the fact that they are being held at all is testament to the fact that democracy is gradually taking hold in Iraq. Contradicting calls that the people of Iraq and their majority religion of Islam are incompatible with democracy, these elections illustrate that the people of Iraq want a more peaceful and democratic future.

Secondly, none of this would have ever been allowed under the former regime whose brutality suppressed any form of dissent or calls for genuine democratic reform. This demonstrates the Iraqi people's ability to move beyond the tyranny and oppression of the past and their rapid uptake of the freedoms and responsibilities that come with democracy.

Finally, all of this is happening in spite of, not because of, US occupation and interference. From the very beginning there has been a startling gap between US rhetoric and action on the issue of democracy in Iraq. On the one hand they have argued that the success of Iraq's democracy is central to their broader geo-political agenda, and on the other they have repeatedly tried to silence dissent, to limit democratic freedoms and to interfere in due process.

This began with attempts to install a pro-US puppet government in Iraq immediately after the invasion. Interestingly, resistance came from the highest echelons of Iraqi society, including senior Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani who mobilised his wide support base and called for democratic elections.

In addition, the US was quick to nullify the results of a whole series of spontaneous elections that sprang up across Iraq. Unfamiliar with such lively, grass-roots democracy, the US outlawed these elections and the officials who had been elected by their own constituents were promptly replaced.

The US has also gone to great lengths to interfere in Iraq's Fourth Estate. They have forcibly shut down several of Iraq's independent newspapers that proved too critical of the occupying forces and their military operations. In addition, the US has waged a covert Psy-Ops war, planting more than 1000 propaganda pieces in many of Iraq's newspapers on contentious issues like religion, occupation and federalism.

The irony here barely needs to be stated. At a time when Iraq is struggling to build a stable and robust democracy following years of Baathist repression, the US has taken several measures to limit and control the democracy they have claimed to want for Iraq.

However, with the new US President and his stated desire to get combat troops out of Iraq, the 2009 elections will be critical in shaping the future of this complex nation.

While it is impossible to prophecy the outcomes of all of this, at the very least the forthcoming elections represent another small, if uncertain, step on the long road to a more democratic Iraq.



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