Given the truly terrible security situation in many or most of the majority-Sunni parts of Iraq, and concomitant inability of reputable international election-monitoring organizations to field anything like a satisfactory presence of monitors around the country– then if the “no” vote in the majority-Sunni provinces in next Saturday’s referendum on the “constitution” is announced as being not sufficient to block the constitution’s implementation, why should anyone, including Iraq’s Sunni Arabs and their backers and friends elsewhere, be expected to accept the validity of that result?
I’m just asking the question. I guess around this time next week we’ll start to see what the answer might be…
10 thoughts on “Iraqi referendum: a question”
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Given the truly terrible security situation in many or most of the majority-Sunni parts of Iraq, and concomitant inability of reputable international election-monitoring organizations to field anything like a satisfactory presence of monitors around the country—
Come on Helen, what you talking about, the all process in fact just staged by US administration to pass sone goals and objectives set during Bremer time and TLA, which include selling the Iraqi assets and more that that.
This process under lawlessness and no security created by US forces sweeping towns and cities in the areas were had serious opposition to all the process with staged goals, what Iraqi waiting for 18 months till now its as you mentioned in one of last post is the essential services and basics not the constitution and selling THE RICH OIL WELLS at this stage the most important is electricity water, and sewage networks in addition to other facilities to make Iraqi life resumed as normal.
The recent talks inside the Green Zoon about the problems between PM “Ibraheem Alja’afay, and President “Jalal Talabani” and the sacculations of demanding resignation of the AlJa’afary, and the new name favoured by US is ADEL ABDUL MAHADY! Do you know who is this guy?
He is one of three Iraqis worked with Noah Freedman, in one of his many visits to US and meting GWB, he said Iraqi OIL SECTOR should be privatizes and give opportunity for foreign investors to developed this industry!!!!
Yeah he is right with all this chaos its better to sale as peanut, who cares and they enjoying the Green Zoon….
The realty Helen sweeping towns and cities with displaced the peoples from their homes and districts it just excuses to marginalised the Sunni or other opposition for US Occupations and their plans and any reputable international election-monitoring organizations it just a complete lie.
U.S. to Take Bigger Bite of Iraq’s Economic Pie
Adil Abdel Mahdi. Finance Minister said
“the fact that they wanted to all agree that they’d better make certain that Shia were a majority in this election was all well and good, but now comes the hard part. Jaafari will have to get a very, very good payout to agree to Adel becoming prime minister, and the question is, really, can that happen.”
NOAH FELDMAN
IRAQ AFTER THE ELECTIONS
Its PDF file, please dowload and save to see.
Dear Helena,
To answer your question, the validity of the referendum is very unlikely to be accepted by Sunnis across Iraq. But this is largely true already, regardless of the security situation during the vote, or the presence, or lack thereof, of adequate monitoring. In Sunni eyes (and this is a view with which I am sympathetic), the entire political process lacks legitimacy because it is being imposed by force of arms by an occupying army. The recent sweeps by the US military across Western Iraq can only reinforce this view.
If Iraq’s “shotgun” constitution is ratified, as now seems likely, it is difficult to see it leading to anything but further polarization, and lots more violence.
Patrick
I read an article a while ago describing several clumbsy attempts by Kurdish groups to stuff ballots in the past election. They attempted this fraud in an obvious way which led U.S. troops to intervine and stop them. If they had been more discrete the soldiers would not have noticed.
Scott Ritter has also claimed based on information from a military source that the U.S. altered those election results. This wouldn’t surprise me given the criticism Bush was receiving about the elections handing Iraq to Iran. Anyway I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a lot of shady activities happening in the current elections.
The manipulation of the January election results was not lost on the Shiite leadership. Patrick Cockburn, Baghdad correspondent for The Independent, wrote in April:
“It is almost universally believed among Shia leaders that their majority in the 30 January election was massaged downwards by electoral officials in order to increase the share of the vote of Iyad Allawi, the secular candidate and US-supported prime minister, from 7 to 8 per cent, up to 14 per cent. That was to keep the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shia coalition, from getting close to the two-thirds majority that would have given it the ability to form a government alone.”
Incidentally, this is an issue that Juan Cole has almost completely ignored, for reasons that are unknown to me.
It’s not who votes, it’s who counts that votes. There was some mention that the 13% garnered by Allawi was fabricated.
For example, Seymour M. Hersh implied that there was fraud: “The methods and the scope of the covert effort have been hard to discern. The current and former military and intelligence officials who spoke to me about the election operation were unable, or unwilling, to give precise details about who did what and where on Election Day. These sources said they heard reports of voter intimidation, ballot stuffing, bribery, and the falsification of returns, but the circumstances, and the extent of direct American involvement, could not be confirmed.”
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“Incidentally, this is an issue that Juan Cole has almost completely ignored, for reasons that are unknown to me.”
Cole rejected the idea that the Americans manipulated the elections to any significant extent, on the grounds that Allawi would have done a lot better if they had. That’s not to say the attempt wasn’t made, of course.
“Cole rejected the idea that the Americans manipulated the elections to any significant extent, on the grounds that Allawi would have done a lot better if they had.”
The reality is that Allawi did a hell of a lot better in the “election” than he did in any of the polls, and that is some evidence that the Americans manipulated it. It would have been far too difficult and far too obvious for them to try to manipulated the results enough to give Allawi any significant power.
I have to agree with Shirin – this seems like a very weak reason to entirely dismiss the possibility that the January election results were somewhat manipulated according to US preferences.
After all, some evidence does exist in support of this contention, and the Shiite leaders certainly believe it. Moreover, we do know for certain that the Americans really wanted Allawi to do well and were alarmed at the prospect of an overwhelming victory by the religious parties.