The Common Ills: Anbar and Nineveh attempt to vote

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Anbar and Nineveh attempt to vote

National Iraqi News Agency reports 1 person was killed by a mortar attack on an Anbar Province polling station and another was left injured. and that, according to the Nineveh Province Police Brigadier General Khaled al-Hamdani, bombings are taking place in various areas of that province in order to prevent voting.

Iraq has 18 provinces. 3 of the 18 are the KRG -- a semi-autonomous region that will hold provincial elections in September. Being semi-autonomous it votes on its own schedule (and did during the 2009 provincial elections as well). The exception being the parliamentary elections when all Iraqi provinces that are voting vote at the same time.

So the 3 KRG provinces didn't vote in the April 20th provincial elections.

In addition, Kirkuk (again) did not get to vote. This is because, long story short, Kirkuk is disputed territory -- claimed by the central government in Baghdad and by the KRG.

The United Nations was pressing the case for allowing Kirkuk to vote. Even so, that was unlikely to happen. It's even more unlikely now that the UN Secretary-General Special Representative to Iraq is an empty seat. Next month, Martin Kobler is placed over the Congo. No one has been named (still) as Kobler's replacement.

That adds up to four provinces. There are 18. So 14 should have voted, right?

Only 12 voted. Nouri decided to penalize the two provinces where he is most unpopular -- Anbar and Nineveh -- by refusing to allow them to vote in April. Kirk H. Sowell (Foreign Policy) rightly observed, "Iraq's April 20 provincial elections were like two elections in one country. They included all provinces outside the Kurdistan region except Kirkuk, due to a long-standing dispute over election law, and the predominately Sunni provinces of Anbar and Ninawa, where the cabinet postponed elections under the pretext of security following a series of candidate assassinations."

Today, they're supposed to be voting.

Finally.

AFP notes that the two provinces have nearly 3 million registered voters and that there are at least 1185 politicians competing for 69 seats.

As Iraqiya leader Ayad Allawi told BBC World Service's Sarah Montague interviewed yesterday, only 30% of registered voters voted in the April 20th elections. Safety concerns and disillusionment may be the reason for the low turnout in April. Today, AFP quotes Mosul college student Fahd Ismail stating, "I have come to the polling centre not to vote, but just to destroy my ballot. I saw that students who graduated before me got nothing from the government, and now we are in the same situation."

The Journal of Turkish Weekly notes, "A vehicle ban was imposed in major cities in the two provinces and thousands of policemen have been deployed" and "The United Nations reported 17 candidates were assassinated ahead of this year's election, more than half of them in Anbar and Nineveh." Adam Schreck and Sameer N. Yacoub (AP) also note, "A total of 17 candidates have been assassinated ahead of this year's election, with the bulk of them from Ninevah, according to Jose Maria Aranaz, the chief electoral adviser at the United Nations mission to Iraq." We include that because one US outlet is wrongly reporting 9. I'm being kind and not naming it.

AP and others are reporting that Nouri stated 'security concerns' for the postponement. That's really not accurate.

Nouri gave that as his first reason. He offered two more. It's not my job to spoonfeed you. If you weren't paying in April or you've already forgotten, that's on you. Hop out the high chair and start walking around on your own, Mommy can't do everything for you.

I will note that when Nouri gave that excuse, the immediate response from politicians in those two areas (including the governors) was that Baghdad was as violent, if not more violent, so why wasn't Baghdad also being blocked from voting?

That's when Nouri came forward with excuse (lie) number two.

In other violence today, NINA reports 2 people were shot dead in Tikrit, mortar shells on a Mosul polling station have left two Iraqi soldiers injured, a mortar that may have been aimed at a Ramadi polling station instead landed on a nearby house and killed the home owner, and a Mosul bombing left three police officers injured.

Even with the violence, Alsumaria reports election observers are saying the turnout in Nineveh Province has already exceeded 30%.

The following community sites -- plus the ACLU, Center for Constitutional Rights, Ms. magazine's blog, Antiwar.com, Jody Watley, Adam Kokesh, Dissident Voice, Susan's On the Edge and Pacifica Evening News -- updated last night and this morning: