Sunnis want election delayed
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Sunni Muslim politicians have called on the government to postpone the Jan. 30 national election despite Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s insistence that the balloting go ahead as scheduled even in areas plagued by insurgency.
Adnan Pachachi, a former foreign minister and leading figure in the former Iraqi Governing Council, said Thursday that delaying the balloting by three months or more would enable political leaders to persuade Sunni clerics and others to abandon their call for an election boycott.
“I think that it will not be in the interest of anyone to let large segments of the Iraqi population be completely left out of the political process,” Pachachi, leader of the Independent Democrats, told the Associated Press.
Pachachi’s comments came one day after eight Sunni groups urged the government to delay the election unless it agrees to a number of demands, including changing the law which declares the country a single constituency.
Under the law, all Iraqis will vote for the same list of candidates. Seats will be allocated according to the percentage of the vote each party receives, with an estimated 50,000 votes necessary to win a single seat.
Many Sunnis fear the rival Shiites, estimated to form about 60 percent of Iraq’s nearly 26 million people, will dominate the new elected government.
If the country is considered a single constituency, Shiite votes would overwhelm those of Sunnis even in areas with a majority Sunni population. Sunnis make up an estimated 20 percent of Iraq’s total population.
Pachachi said changes in the law were not realistic considering the relatively short time before the election.
However, Pachachi said that if many Sunnis boycotted the elections, the result would be an “illegitimate” parliament with “no guarantee that the security situation will improve.”
“Personally, in the very beginning I said that we shouldn’t change the date of the elections because the Iraqi people are anxious to have the elections,” he said.
“But we have a problem and we have to deal with it.”
He said that representatives of 15 political parties are expected to meet at his party headquarters today to discuss the feasibility of postponing the elections.
Meanwhile, plans continued for the balloting, the first since the 2003 collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Iraq’s electoral commission extended until next Thursday the deadline for registering political parties in the insurgent-riddled provinces of Salaheddin, Anbar and Mosul.
Commission spokesman Farid Ayar said the delay was made in order to allow all groups to take part in the election.
In their declaration Wednesday, the Sunni groups also asked the government to allow those imprisoned and all those living abroad to vote. The Independent Electoral Commission has already said Iraqis living abroad would be able to cast ballots in 14 different countries with large Iraqi populations.
The instability in Iraq has also raised doubts about the election being held.
The eight Sunni groups also called for abolishing the 60-day emergency law imposed Nov. 7 on the eve of the Fallujah assault, saying it limits freedom to campaign.
Other groups which backed the call for an election delay if their demands were not met included the Democratic Arab Front; the Reconciliation and the Liberation Bloc; al-Wasat; the Iraqi Independent Front; the Iraqi National Movement; and the National Front of Iraq Tribes.