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Mammoth Task of Counting Votes Begins
Electoral officials estimate 60 per cent turnout as polling stations sift and collate two sets of election results
Election worker Bairaq Salam Kadhim knows the task of counting votes will be an exacting job that will require long hours of work. But he says he doesn’t mind because he is so happy that the first democratic elections in Iraq in decades were a success.
“I don't feel tired because the sense of joy is overcoming my fatigue,” said Kadhim, who works at polling station no. 7 in Baghdad. “What we’re doing is for those people who sacrificed and martyred themselves for the sake of Iraq, and who did not live to see elections.”
At a press conference on January 31, officials with the Independent Election Commission of Iraq, IECI, said initial turnout figures indicated that about eight million went to the polls, which works out at about 60 per cent of those eligible to vote. Commission spokesman Farid Ayar said most of Iraq’s 18 governorates had already sent their counted votes to Baghdad, where the final tabulation will take place.
Ayar said that on the basis of initial reports, the vote had been generally fair and transparent and there were no indications of widespread fraud, although the commission was still waiting for reports to be submitted by local election workers and political parties.
In his first press conference after the election, interim prime minister Ayad Allawi said, “The terrorists know they can’t win.”
He spoke of a “new era of history” in which Iraqis must work together.
Preliminary results could be announced 48 hours after the election, but it will take up to 10 days for official results to be finalised. Two hundred election workers will do the final count in Baghdad.
Half an hour after the polls closed, Kadhim and his colleagues at polling station no. 7 began the first sorting of ballot papers. Votes were separated according to which of the two elections they were for –the Iraqi National Assembly or the local governorate council – and according to the candidate selected.
Of the 1,900 voters this polling station was designed to handle, 1,300 actually came to cast a ballot.
To ensure transparency, the sorting and separating process was videotaped and was also supervised by volunteer election monitors, said Qasim al-Janabi, the polling station manager.
“The work requires accuracy and attentiveness, as the responsibility for correct separation lies with us,” said Kadhim. “We also have to separate out the spoiled ballot papers, such as those that contain votes for more than one party, or have been left unmarked.”
Ballots cast for the same coalition or party were collected in piles of 25, labelled and put into boxes. The whole process lasted five hours, and then the boxes and the accompanying tallies were sent off to IECI headquarters.
“The sorting process went smoothly,” said al-Janabi. “But the fact that some entities [listed candidates] got only a few [less than 25] votes caused some confusion when they were put into separate parcels.”
This story has not been bylined because of concerns for the security of IWPR reporters.
http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/irq/irq_107_1_eng.txt
“I don't feel tired because the sense of joy is overcoming my fatigue,” said Kadhim, who works at polling station no. 7 in Baghdad. “What we’re doing is for those people who sacrificed and martyred themselves for the sake of Iraq, and who did not live to see elections.”
At a press conference on January 31, officials with the Independent Election Commission of Iraq, IECI, said initial turnout figures indicated that about eight million went to the polls, which works out at about 60 per cent of those eligible to vote. Commission spokesman Farid Ayar said most of Iraq’s 18 governorates had already sent their counted votes to Baghdad, where the final tabulation will take place.
Ayar said that on the basis of initial reports, the vote had been generally fair and transparent and there were no indications of widespread fraud, although the commission was still waiting for reports to be submitted by local election workers and political parties.
In his first press conference after the election, interim prime minister Ayad Allawi said, “The terrorists know they can’t win.”
He spoke of a “new era of history” in which Iraqis must work together.
Preliminary results could be announced 48 hours after the election, but it will take up to 10 days for official results to be finalised. Two hundred election workers will do the final count in Baghdad.
Half an hour after the polls closed, Kadhim and his colleagues at polling station no. 7 began the first sorting of ballot papers. Votes were separated according to which of the two elections they were for –the Iraqi National Assembly or the local governorate council – and according to the candidate selected.
Of the 1,900 voters this polling station was designed to handle, 1,300 actually came to cast a ballot.
To ensure transparency, the sorting and separating process was videotaped and was also supervised by volunteer election monitors, said Qasim al-Janabi, the polling station manager.
“The work requires accuracy and attentiveness, as the responsibility for correct separation lies with us,” said Kadhim. “We also have to separate out the spoiled ballot papers, such as those that contain votes for more than one party, or have been left unmarked.”
Ballots cast for the same coalition or party were collected in piles of 25, labelled and put into boxes. The whole process lasted five hours, and then the boxes and the accompanying tallies were sent off to IECI headquarters.
“The sorting process went smoothly,” said al-Janabi. “But the fact that some entities [listed candidates] got only a few [less than 25] votes caused some confusion when they were put into separate parcels.”
This story has not been bylined because of concerns for the security of IWPR reporters.
http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/irq/irq_107_1_eng.txt
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Following an election in which turnout seems to have been unexpectedly high, people’s minds are already turning to the new National Assembly.
By IWPR reporters in Iraq (ICR No. 107, 31-Jan-05)
After an election that appears to have been more of a success than many dared hope, analysts in Iraq are trying to figure out how the winners will shape a new political landscape.
Turnout was high overall, with the Iraqi Independent Electoral Commission estimating that up to eight million people cast ballots, around 60 per cent of eligible voters. Carlos Valenzuela, the United Nation’s top election official in Iraq, said that exact turnout figures would not be known for several weeks.
Kurds in the north and Shia in the south voted in large numbers. In the mainly Sunni Muslim areas in central Iraq, turnout was lower, but even there it appeared to be higher than expected.
Najm al-Rubai, a spokesman for the Iraq Election Information Network, said preliminary field reports indicated that there had been some small procedural violations, but “they were not so big as to make the elections illegal”.
Now the political deal-making begins.
None of the big coalitions is expected to win an outright majority of the 275 seats in the transitional National Assembly. That body is charged with writing a new constitution and choosing a president and two vice presidents, who will in turn select a prime minister.
The new assembly members are going to have to make compromises if they are to tackle the myriad of challenges that lie ahead.
The first problem for the newly-elected assembly will be how to bring Sunni Muslims into the business of government. Veteran politician Adnan Pachachi, himself a Sunni, said he wanted the Sunni parties that had boycotted the election to take part in writing the constitution.
"If that can be done, I think we will have paved the way for a much more inclusive election before the end of the year," said Pachachi.
Analysts have warned that a failure to bring Sunnis on board could result in civil war. But the parties took part in the election are unlikely to want to give up assembly seats to Sunni politicians, or to view their inclusion at this late stage as fair.
Another problem could be the desire of some Shia political groups to impose a religious agenda in Iraq. Analysts have suggested that the country’s supreme Shia leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, supported the Shia-led United Iraqi Alliance as a way of gaining a say in the drafting of the country’s new constitution.
Sistani is said to support the idea of making Islam the official religion of Iraq, as it is in almost all Arab countries.
Analysts also believe that some Shia figures will seek to introduce Islamic law into the country’s civil code. Last year, religious members of the United States-appointed Iraqi Governing Council attempted to change Iraq’s personal status laws, which govern issues such as women’s rights in divorce and inheritance. The plans were shelved after a public outcry from women’s activists in Iraq and abroad, but are likely to resurface if religious-minded politicians play a major role in the new interim legislature.
In the run-up to the election, the United Iraqi Alliance had attempted to dispel fears about these issues. Mouwafak al-Rubaie, a leading candidate with the United Iraqi Alliance, said his party would not seek to establish a religious state and would work to build a “democratic, federal and pluralistic system”.
There may also be an ethnic divide in the new Assembly. It is likely that the Kurds will push to get their autonomous status written into the constitution. The Kurdish region – comprising three northern governorates – became self-governing after it fell out of Saddam Hussein’s grasp in 1991.
The two main Kurdish parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, PUK, and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, KDP, formed a joint list at national level to so as maximise the Kurdish vote.
So far, the PUK and KDP have managed to largely muzzle the voices calling for complete secession from the rest of Iraq. However, there were tents outside Kurdish-region polling sites on election day where activists conducted an unofficial vote on independence.
Sistani has already voiced opposition to giving the Kurds a veto over the constitution, which they currently have as part of the Transitional Administrative Law, the interim constitution. A Kurdish drive for greater autonomy could cause deep divisions in the interim assembly.
What is clear at this stage is that those parties which win seats in the National Assembly will have to work through their differences fairly rapidly if they are to meet the August deadline for drafting the new constitution. Voters are scheduled to vote on the new constitution in October, and then return to the polls in December to elect a new parliament.
This story has not been bylined because of concerns for the security of IWPR reporters.
http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/irq/irq_107_2_eng.txt
By an IWPR reporter in Baaqubah (ICR No. 107, 31-Jan-05)
Masked gunmen in the northeastern town of Baaqubah shot off the fingers of at least four Shia voters after they went to the polls in Iraq’s historic elections.
After the polling stations had closed at 5 pm on January, the insurgents set up makeshift checkpoints around the city to look for people marked with indelible ink on their index finger – a sign that they had voted.
Najm al-Firaiji, a 21-year-old student, told IWPR how he was targeted standing with a friend outside his house in the al-Suwamra neighborhood in the city’s New Baaqubah area, about two and a half hours after polls closed.
Four masked men approached and asked whether anyone in the neighbourhood had gone out to vote.
Al-Firaiji’s friend ran off, and the student told the man he didn’t think anyone had been to the polls.
But then one of the men pointed a pistol at his head and told him to show them his finger. It bore the telltale purple ink stain, and one of the gunmen shot it off.
“I hadn’t intended to vote but my friends persuaded me, saying there was a possibility that things would get better,” said al-Firaiji.
“Will they be able to cut off the fingers of eight million people?”
Iraq’s electoral commission estimates that eight million out of the 14 million people eligible to vote – about 60 per cent - cast a ballot on election day.
Al-Firaju and three other victims of similar attacks were treated in Baaqubah’s hospital.
Despite explosions and attacks on polling stations in Baaqubah, which lies about 65 kilometres northeast of Baghdad, and the rest of Diyala governorate, turnout here was high at around the national average, an election official in the province told IWPR.
Most were Kurds or Shia Arabs, the official said.
“I am 66 years old and this is the first time I’ve voted, said a beaming Hadi Abdul Hussein.
Attacks continued after polls closed in Baaqubah.
Militants open fired on election workers and security officials transporting ballot boxes from a polling station located at the al-Batra primary school. Iraqi police reportedly fled the scene, but United States troops moved in and managed to stop the insurgents stealing the boxes.
This story has not been bylined because of concerns for the security of IWPR reporters.
http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/irq/irq_107_4_eng.txt
By IWPR reporters in Kut and Basra (ICR No. 107, 31-Jan-05)
Voters in the mainly Shia south spoke with a loud voice on election day, after years of suffering in silence under Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Voter turnout in some areas neared 80 per cent, as people waited in long lines to cast their ballots. In Diwaniyah Province, electoral officials said that 77 per cent of registered voters turned out.
“The Iraqi people love freedom and this big turnout proved that,” said Saad al-Madhloom, head of the Diwaniyah branch of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, IECI. He added that transportation problems kept some voters in remote areas from reaching polling sites.
Shia, who make up 60 per cent of Iraq’s population, saw the ballot as a chance to overturn decades of Sunni rule. Saddam Hussein, who favoured the minority Sunnis, led a brutal campaign of oppression against the Shia.
In the southeastern city of Kut, there were reports that Sunnis there largely defied a boycott called by the Muslim Scholars Association, and turned out widely.
“Some parties boycotted but that doesn’t mean that we should boycott as well,” said Salim Ghanim, a Sunni. “On the contrary, my family, my neighbours and I voted and we didn’t have any difficulties at all.”
Voters in Kut generally were slow to get to the polls, but voting steadily increased over the course of election day. Sometimes, entire families came to polling stations together, carrying political banners and Iraqi flags.
Several people said that they were encouraged by the security crackdown before election day. They also expressed hope that the elections will lead to peace in the country.
“How can I not participate in the rebirth of the new Iraq? Saddam has killed two of my sons,” said Salima Abbas, who leaned against the shoulder of her grandson outside a polling site.
In Babil province south of Baghdad, an overall figure at least 75 per cent of registered voters participated in the election, although turnout was noticeably lower in mainly Sunni areas.
Shatha Abbas, the assistant chief of the IECI in Babil, said that turnout was low in towns such as Jarf al-Sakhr and al-Hamiyah, but it was higher in al-Musayyab and al-Iskandariyah, hovering around 60 per cent. No polling violations were reported.
"The separation and counting of the votes and the percentages were determined with a high level of transparency, with monitors in attendance from different parties as well as a number of journalists,” said Qays Al-Hasnawi, an IECI spokesman in Babil.
Voters in Babil expressed optimism as the ballots were being counted.
"I did not expect that the elections would be conducted so wonderfully,” said Star Al-Ma'moori. “It is a success for Iraq, a success for democracy and it is a big achievement for the Iraqis."
In Basra in the south, election officials predicted that the turnout would top 80 per cent.
Bassem Ali Khanjar, director of a polling site in southern Basra, said the only problem there were delays caused by illiterate people showing up without the helpers they were supposed to bring along.
“The turnout was good, and during some hours of the day more than expected,” he said.
This story has not been bylined because of concerns for the security of IWPR reporters.
http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/irq/irq_107_3_eng.txt