Iraq Polttical News: Iraq gearing up to conduct local elections in April

Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) unveiled last week its plans for conducting local elections in most of the provinces in the country, scheduled for April 20th.

Among other efforts, the IHEC started preparing needed election items such as ballot boxes, secure bags, ink and ballots to outfit balloting centres, said Sarbast Mustafa Rasheed, chairman of the IHEC board of commissioners.

Officials also are finalising the electronic database of new voters, following an upgrade operation that ran from December 9th, 2012 to January 7th of this year, which brought about half a million first-time voters to 863 voter registration centres, he said.

The IHEC’s provincial offices “periodically conduct assessments of their balloting centres that cover all technical, logistic and security aspects, so that voters will cast their ballots on Election Day in an appropriate and secure environment”, he said.

Election process

The government allocated about 184 billion dinars ($158 million) to the IHEC to help it cover all the requirements of the election process, 35 billion dinars ($30 million) of which it has received so far, Rasheed said.

Meanwhile, the IHEC registered 139 political coalitions and parties, which will be running to fill 447 local council seats across all Iraqi provinces, with the exception of the three provinces in the Kurdistan region — Erbil, Sulaimaniya, and Dohuk — and the province of Kirkuk, “for which parliament has not yet approved a special electoral law for local elections”, he said.

Rasheed said the commission is in daily contact with the United Nations mission in Iraq, and the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Iraq Martin Kobler, to ensure that the upcoming elections will be fair and transparent.

“Also, we are working with international organisations to develop the skills of our staff to ensure compliance with international standards for the conduct of free, credible elections,” he said.

Through the media and other promotional means, the IHEC will urge voters to take part in the elections so as to reinforce Iraq’s democratic experience and support its political process, Rasheed added.

Constitutional right

Parliamentarian Ali al-Allaq told Mawtani that he was satisfied with the IHEC’s pace of preparations for the local elections.

“As we continue to follow up on the commission’s work, we see it is making serious and substantial efforts to prepare all the requirements for the electoral process and to create suitable conditions for voters to cast their ballots freely,” he said.

Al-Allaq said he expected that the provincial council elections “will see mass participation”, adding, “Any success in any electoral process is a success for democracy, and an important foundation for progress and prosperity in the country.”

Meanwhile, MP Qassim Mohammed Qassim said “the chairman of the commission, who we have met more than once, assured us there would be no obstacles to holding the election on its scheduled date.”

“The commission is ready to honour all its duties and obligations” within the framework of the elections, he added.

“Local election is a right that is constitutionally guaranteed to all citizens to choose their representatives to provincial councils, and therefore, we should all be keen to make this popular forum a success,” he said.

Source: Al Shorfa