Many Iraqis dubious about vote

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Plans for holding Iraqi national elections in January elicit growing skepticism among many Iraqis who question whether balloting can be free and fair so long as the Americans wield such vast influence over the country.

Mounting violence has already delayed the elections for months. Hundreds of Iraqis have been killed for nothing more than lining up to take jobs with the police or to sign on with the national guard. Insurgent mortar and rocket attacks are daily events even in Baghdad. Cities like Fallujah and Ramadi are under the control of militants.

Going to the polls may well be a very dangerous undertaking, and the possibility of a truly representative government emerging from the January voting appears a diminishing hope.

If the vote proves credible, Iraqis will have chosen a genuinely representative government for the first time in modern history, a major hurdle in putting behind them the decades of oppression imposed until Saddam Hussein was ousted 17 months ago. The elections are vital to a U.S. exit strategy from Iraq.

But attaining that level of credibility will prove difficult in a country where anti-U.S. sentiment runs high, most people distrust the key players in Iraq’s postwar politics and many tend to routinely blame the United States for everything that goes wrong.

Additionally, there is a widespread expectation that large and well-funded political parties – with tacit U.S. patronage – will trounce smaller anti-American groups.

The 275-seat assembly to be elected will draft a permanent constitution for a nationwide referendum by next Oct. 15. If the constitution is adopted, a second general election will be held two months later and a democratic government would take control by Jan. 15, 2006.

The January vote was agreed to earlier this year by the United States, the United Nations and Iraq’s now defunct Governing Council after opposition by Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, forced Washington to drop a plan for a legislature selected from regional caucuses. That chamber was to have been formed by last July 1.

Despite the raging violence, President Bush and Iraq’s Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi are determined the vote must go ahead on schedule.

“The Iraqi elections may not be perfect,” Allawi told reporters in Washington on Thursday. “They may not be the best elections that Iraq will ever hold. They will undoubtedly be an excuse for violence from those who despair and despise liberty.”

Voter rolls are already being compiled, in large part from a database created in the 1990s for a nationwide food rationing system, according to Abdul-Hussein Hendawi, chairman of the U.N.-backed Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq.