Monday, August 2, 2021. Will elections take place in October? Should the militia be handed the country and why is COUNTERPUNCH making that argumetn?
The High Electoral Commission in Iraq announced today, Sunday, that October 10 will be an inevitable date for elections, recalling that the beginning of this month of August will be the date for the start of the distribution of biometric voting cards.
In a statement, he said he had started the process of printing ballot papers for public and private voting, noting that the ballots are currently in the final stage of completion, as well as printing introductory leaflets for public voting and guidelines for private voting.
The final stages of completion? What does that mean? Ha e they started printing the ballots yet? They better have, past scrambles ahead of the election indicate that they need eight weeks prior to the election to get those ballots printed and distributed in Iraq. Another question: Why the announcement?
Because people are wondering whether or not elections will take place. Why the question mark on elections? Because so many have announced they won't participate.
Saturday, ASHAR AL-AWSAT noted:
An announcement made by Moqtada al-Sadr that he won’t run in Iraq’s parliamentary elections has increased the chances of those seeking to postpone the early polls scheduled for Oct. 10 to their constitutional date in April 2022.
Sadr’s Sairoon bloc is the biggest in the Iraqi parliament with 54 out of 329 seats.
Several other prominent factions and parties have recently announced their rejection to run in the elections, including the Iraqi Communist Party, the Iraqi Forum Movement led by Ayad Allawi, the National Dialogue Front led by Saleh al-Mutlaq, the Iraqi Republican Gathering of Saad Asim al-Janabi, and others.
A well-informed Iraqi politician told Asharq Al-Awsat that the priority was now to hold the elections in October.
The list above fails to note the Iraq's Chaldeans are said to be sitting out the elections and some leaders in Iraq's October Revolution are also saying that they will sit out the elections.
Today, ASAHRQ AL-AWSAT notes:
Head of the State of Law coalition, former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been pressing for holding the parliamentary elections on time in October.
He has made a series of tweets to press his demand, even though he will not personally run in the polls, but his coalition will.
Maliki is not the only Shiite figure hoping the elections will be held as scheduled. Head of the al-Fatah coalition, Hadi al-Ameri has also been making the same demand.
Shiite forces are eager for the elections to be held on time, viewing them as an opportunity to make political gains after prominent cleric Moqtada al-Sadr announced his withdrawal from the race.
Sadr has notably only withdrawn from the elections, not announced a boycott. Moreover, he has not officially approached authorities to pull out from the polls, meaning the mercurial cleric could always still opt to participate.
Before he potentially makes such a move, Shiite powers are sending out the message that they are ready to step in and are capable of filling the void left behind the cleric. Ameri in particular has kicked off his electoral campaign, eyeing a sweep of parliament and the ultimate goal of naming a prime minister, who in Iraq must be a Sunni figure.
Ameri’s electoral agenda offers nothing new to the Iraqis, prompting criticism even from his own supporters. He made the same promises he and others had made in previous elections, none of which have been fulfilled.
Nouri would see the biggest benefit if elections were held today. We've noted his increased presence and his increased popularity. (These statements are not an endorsement of Nouri al-Maliki. First off, he's a thug. Second off, I can't vote in Iraq's elections and I don't make an endorsement in any election I can't vote in.) This is how bad things are in Iraq, Nouri could return to power. Bully Boy Bush imposed him on the Iraqi people in 2006. The Iraqi people voted him out in 2010 but Joe Biden, via The Erbil Agreement, gave Nouri a second term. Despite promises that he would retire at the end of the second term, he then began saying he would seek a third term and Barack Obama had to convey to Nouri that Nouri was done. But now? Now Nouri could return to power.
Will elections take place in October? At this point, no one knows. But if they do, they won't have legitimacy if everyone sits them out.
The mess that is "Iraq" -- created and sewn by the US government -- is appalling; however, more appalling is Farhang Faraydoon Namdar writing at THE JERUSALEM POST in a column entitled "How the US has put the most peaceful region of Iraq at risk."
We all know how the US put Iraq at risk -- by invading in 2003.
Not only does Farhang refuse to recognize that reality, he wants more violence:
More violence, he insists, is the answer.
His big lament, how the US has put Iraq at risk? By 'withdrawing.' There's no withdrawal, you idiot. There's a drawdown but it's not real and the numbers of US military on the ground in Iraq likely won't change at all. If that's news to you, see reports by Daniel R. DePetris (NBC) and Ruth Sherlock, (NPR)
By the way, Farhang is now part of the CIA-funded Goran political party in the KRG. Just file that fact away.
For years, the PUK and the KDP were the dominant political parties in the KRG -- decades. All it took was some CIA-seed money and the Talabani family to act like power mad idiots and suddenly Goran (Change) became a viable political party and the region's second most popular one.
The editorial board of THE MINNESOTA STAR-TRIBUNE acknowledges that the drawdown "is more semantic than seminal."
Or as Lee Camp notes in the video below, Joe Biden's decided to 'end' the Iraq War . . . for the fifth time.
Toilet mouthed Nicky Reid thinks he has an answer for Iraq:
I for one say we just let the militias have Iraq. They’ve done a better job governing it than we ever did. The truth is America doesn’t give a flying fuck about democracy. We never bothered promoting it in the liberated monarchy of Kuwait for Allah’s sake, and even if we did, that still wouldn’t make it right for Iraq. The current government in Bagdad is as corrupt as its ever been because the Iraqi people didn’t choose it. Just [. . .] Saddam, it was forced down their throats by certain enlightened white people convinced that the Westphalian nation state is the solution for savages everywhere. This system isn’t indigenous to the Gulf. The militias that formed in the vacuum of its repeated failures are. In many ways they resemble the armed nomadic tribes who ruled these deserts long before
I've removed a word that may have been a typo -- it's an ethnic slur -- or it might have been Toilet Mouth running with his stupidity -- stupidity that COUNTERPUNCH was more than willing to publish. How proud they must be and when the AIPCA descends upon them, they can cry to someone else.
Turning Iraq over to the militias is not an answer. Leaving Iraq and letting the Iraqi people sort it out is an answer. It's their country. They can fight to make it what they want. And should. Again, it's their country.
Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "The Scary and Repugnant Ana Kasparian" went up early Sunday morning.