Elections in Iraq: Early Comments

The elections have concluded, and overall, one can say the outcome should be positive. But huge issues are already pointing their noses, as a number of troubling incidents have occurred.

Generally speaking, most Iraqi, and most Arabs, seem to have been overjoyed to see Iraqis finally participate in something resembling of democracy. As I am, too.

There were Iraqi celebrating everywhere in the world, and praise for this important event in a majority of Muslim press releases.

I mean let’s be honest here, why not support it!? It’s not like Iraqis appreciate being blown up to bits, and therefore it’s not like they’d ever pledge allegiance to the murdering cowards who bomb markets and mosques. The choice of lists to vote for, though confusing, was wide and broad, and included representation of minorities, moderates and more Islamic elements. Election rigging aside, this sound democratic to me.

But as I pointed out in my earlier post, and here again, a number of issues are outstanding. Voter turnout for the Sunni constituency seems very low, because of pressure not to vote. As I said, that’s something largely self-imposed; it’s self-imposed by the Sunni community which puts pressure on its individuals. At the same time it’s fair to say that of course, the rebels are also to blame for they also put pressure.

Now, in a similar way, there are reports that Assyrians and other minorities in the North were prevented from voting! I find this very shocking. It happened essentially because of mismanagement. According to web reports, several towns inhabited by thousands of Assyrians had their elections organized by Kurds, who it seems purposefully ensured voting material and staff would not show up, therefore preventing thousands of Assyrians from voting. I’m still shocked. I cannot imagine how even worse it must have been for the even smaller minorities such as the Yezedis, who must feel completely sidelined.

Anyway this is it for now, when the results come out I’ll try to get something out of them.
check out
www.aina.org/releases/20050131003708.htm
for the full story from the Assyrian International News Agency,

and send a letter to the NYT for their completely wrong interpretation of Kurds preventing Assyrian voters! this is their erroneous article: [it seems they've removed it but try it anyway]
www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/international/middleeast/30cnd-mosu.html

they've tried to fix their mistakes at www.nytimes.com/2005/02/02/international/middleeast/02election.html"where they say "Quite a significant number of Christians in the Mosul area were denied ballot boxes and ballots,"... it's more than quite a significant number, it's a majority!

In fact NYT's entire reporting on the Iraqi elections from the north is erroneous... in their statistics of likeliness to vote per ethnicities, they say 58% of assyrians will vote... but then they say "Governorates of Ninewah (Mosul) and Dohuk were excluded from poll for security reasons"... that's where there's a highest concentration of Assyrians! that number would have been much higher would Nineveh not be excluded.

as always if you care to disagree please post your info.