Iraq presidential council rejects election plan

Iraq presidential council rejects election plan

The U.S. hopes the new elections in October will give the Sunni more power.

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq’s presidential council rejected a plan for new provincial elections and sent the bill back to parliament Wednesday for reworking, a major setback to U.S.-backed efforts to promote national reconciliation.

The ruling came despite a reported last-minute telephone call by Vice President Dick Cheney to the main holdout on the three-member panel, which has to sign off on laws passed by the legislature. The White House tried to put its best face on the development, saying “this is democracy at work.”

The outcome underscored the immense challenges involved in efforts to distribute power among Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds five years after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Such power-sharing agreements are the end goal of last year’s buildup of U.S. troops. The hope has been that the declining bloodshed will remove the fear that has paralyzed Iraqi politicians, enabling them to compromise and strike deals across the sectarian divide. And that, in theory, should blunt support for the Sunni insurgency and allow American troops to withdraw from the country.

Many Sunnis boycotted the last nationwide elections, in January 2005, for the 275-member parliament and for local officials. The vote ushered in representational government, but it also gave majority Shiites and minority Kurds the bulk of power.

The U.S. hopes new elections, to be held Oct. 1 according to the draft measure, would give the Sunni more political power and thereby weaken the insurgency.

The main sticking point in Wednesday’s decision, however, appeared to have more to do with internal Shiite divisions. The main objection focused on whether local officials or the central government currently led by Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will have the right to fire provincial governors.

“There are some items in this law that contradict the constitution, such as the governor and how to sack him,” said Nasser al-Ani, a Sunni lawmaker and presidential council spokesman. “There is an objection and it is constitutional. The presidential council has the right to object.”

He didn’t say who objected.

But Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi later said it was his Shiite counterpart, Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi.

Kurds supported Abdul-Mahdi’s objection, according to lawmakers who attended the council meeting where the elections law was discussed. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.