Four months after the date set for the vote, October 10 this year, the campaign for the next Iraqi legislative elections has already begun. The parties are using the holy month of Ramadan to campaign. The candidates got out of their cars to walk around and distribute baskets of food to the fasting poor. The large tables set up for theiftar, the fast-breaking meal, are used to deliver talks and deliver promises.
This time it seems that there will be no further postponements for the 44 registered coalitions, the 267 authorized parties and the 3,523 candidates, of which 1,002 presented by the coalitions. This vote will be very difficult, predicts expert Sadiq al Tai, “due to the large number of armed parties and Iranian interference”. Independent candidates will have very little chance in this scorching competition.
Steps to overcome
Names of candidates will have to pass numerous filters to be approved by the Iraqi Independent High Electoral Commission. The ministry of education will have to make sure that their school certificates are not fake, as happened in the past. The interior ministry will check whether candidates have committed crimes, and another commission will be tasked with checking whether they were previously part of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party. Finally, the Integrity Commission will assess whether candidates are accused of corruption.
Previous coalitions running in the 2018 elections disintegrated and new ones emerged. In the autonomous Kurdish region the alliance between the two main parties (the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Puk, and the Democratic Party of Kurdistan, Kdp) has been split because the Kdp has decided to run alone in the elections. Tensions are at the highest levels in the Sunni component of Iraq. The two rival candidates exchanged accusations of each other and went so far as to scream at each other and use their hands in a televised debate that aired on May 3, forcing the show’s presenter to interrupt the broadcast. No definite alliances have emerged between the parties of the Shiite majority.
What is clear is that the weakest element in the vote will be the Dawa party, which has been appointing the prime minister for 16 years. The population and parties hold him responsible for military and civilian failures and defeats. The party strongly opposed the new electoral law.
The most important player at stake is the Sairun coalition, whose leader Moqtada al Sadr expects to win one hundred of the 325 seats in parliament, a quota that would allow him to appoint the next prime minister. Meanwhile, incumbent premier Mustafa al Kadhimi has unleashed a political earthquake by announcing that he will not form a coalition and will not support any alliance, and causing agitation among his supporters who are working hard to garner sympathy among the protesters.
Nothing will stay the same, yet almost nothing will change in the next elections.
(Translation by Francesco De Lellis)
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