IRAQ: ELECTIONS

Libertyforum: Sunday, January 30, 2005

Iraqi electoral fraud: two articles, and a guide to the candidates

Salim Lone, former adviser to Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN envoy to Iraq killed in 2003, writes in the International Herald Tribune on the elections in Iraq. The message is unambiguous:

This election is a sham...[E]ven as the Americans proclaimed their mission as one designed to introduce democracy and human rights in Iraq, they fought against demands for early elections even from putative allies like the Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. They also maneuvered to put into place a self-governance and electoral plan that, through carefully circumscribed United Nations involvement, they thought would ensure that the hand-picked Iraqi leadership would enjoy some legitimacy, with the elections scheduled for Sunday providing an added boost of Shiite support...But as this blood-stained election shows, the complete breakdown of this plan has been one of the most colossal U.S. policy failures of the last half-century. Indeed, this is not an election that any democratic nation, or indeed any independent international electoral organization, would recognize as legitimate. For the only time in memory, electoral candidates are afraid to be seen in public and are forced to campaign from underground cells, with many afraid to even link their names to their faces in the media. There are no public rallies where voters might glean some information about candidates' positions. As one voter told CNN, he would prefer to vote for George Michael, since he knows more about the singer than about any of the candidates running for office. Those sages interminably repeating that the success of the election will be determined by the level of the turnout do not understand Iraq, or for that matter, elections...

Finally, here's a PDF containing the full list of candidates. Except, of course, where those candidates have requested not to have their names printed.