Kurds, Sunnis may derail Iraq vote
BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq’s Kurds threatened Tuesday to boycott national elections, days after the country’s Sunni vice president threatened to veto the newly passed election law needed to conduct the January vote.
Barely a week after the long- delayed legislation was passed, the hard-fought deal appears to be hitting a major roadblock, threatening to derail the country’s nationwide parliamentary elections and possibly slow U.S. plans to withdraw combat troops from Iraq.
The Kurds and Sunnis are unsatisfied with the allocation of seats in the next parliament and are demanding more spots for their respective constituencies.
The boycott and veto threat come after lawmakers haggled for weeks over the election legislation they finally passed Nov. 8, much to the relief of Iraqi political leaders and the United States, which lobbied hard for the bill.
“We knew that the Sunnis were unhappy; they made that clear from the beginning,” said Joost Hiltermann, Middle East director of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group think tank.
“Nobody knew that the Kurds were unhappy, too.”
The Kurds originally supported the election law, voting in favor of it last week in parliament. But they say it was only over the weekend that they found out that their three provinces in northern Iraq had received fewer seats than they believe they deserved.
Under a proposal to expand parliament from 275 to 323 seats to reflect population growth, only three new seats were allocated to the Kurdish provinces, giving them a total of 38, according to the Independent High Electoral Commission’s Web site.
Other regions saw a far larger jump in their number of representatives. Ninevah province, for one, which borders the Kurdish region, grew from 19 to 31 seats. Basra province in the south grew from 16 to 24 seats.
The office of Kurdistan Regional President Massoud Barzani said the way seats are distributed under the new election law is unfair to Kurds.
“Unless this seat allocation formula is reconsidered in a just manner, the people of [the] Kurdi- stan Region will be compelled to boycott the election,” a statement posted on Barzani’s Web site said.
Mahmoud Othman, a senior Kurdish member of Iraq’s national parliament, said the Kurds had been expecting about 17 additional seats.
“The main point is the allocation of seats,” Othman told The Associated Press. “If no changes are made on this matter, then we will not participate in the elections.”
Hiltermann, the analyst, said it’s not clear what would be a realistic compromise.
“It’s a matter of numbers, and numbers matter in any election anywhere in the world,” he said.
The three northern provinces make up the Kurdish autonomous region, which has its own parliament as well as president. Though Kurds have fought bitter battles among themselves in their regional politics, they have generally presented a strongly united front on the national political scene.
Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh criticized the Kurdish threat to boycott the election.
“There is a chance to solve this problem, and the call to boycott the elections is not appropriate and does not serve democracy and the new Iraq,” he told al-Arabiya television.
The Kurdish demands follow Sunni Arab Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi’s threat Sunday to veto the election law unless voters outside Iraq are guaranteed more seats. Most Iraqis living abroad are believed to be Sunni.