Iraq's trend-setting elections

While not significantly redrawing the political map, Iraq's provincial elections will nonetheless reinforce important political trends underway since the end of the 2005-2007 Iraqi civil war.

Held under the watchful eyes of thousands of American and Iraqi military personnel, 14,431 candidates, including 3,912 women, running in 14 of Iraq's 18 states, contested Iraq's trend-setting provincial elections for 444 legislative seats on 31 January.

Iraq's second local elections since the US invasion were unusually peaceful by Iraqi standards - only nine people were reported killed - but the overall turnout, at 51 percent, was lower than the last national and local elections, which had participation rates of 76 percent and 57 percent, respectively.

In the 2005 provincial elections, a massive boycott by Sunnis and the al-Sadr group led to a lopsided victory by the two dominant Shia groups, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) and the Dawa Party in local councils - an over-representation that further polarized Iraqi society and played no small part in the communal killings that followed soon afterward.

While the results of the Saturday poll will not be in until later this week, these elections will highlight and reinforce several important trends that have been underway for the last year and a half.

National reconciliation

Since Iraq has returned from the abyss of civil war and radical groups have been widely discredited for their extremism, Iraqis of all walks of life are welcoming a return to normalcy and national reconciliation.

"We all used to live peacefully with one another," Walid Ya'gubi, a Sunni resident of (the predominantly Shia) Basra told ISN Security Watch. "It is time to forget what happened during the last few years and go on re-building our lives," he added, before casting his vote.

For its part, and as a result of intense US pressure, the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has belatedly taken some steps to remedy the situation.

Sunnis, which at 27 percent of the population are the single most important disenfranchised group in Iraq, are being slowly recruited to the military, and some top-level government positions are to be made available to them. Preliminary election results in Sunni-dominated states like Nineveh and Diyala indicate decent above-average voter turnouts of 60 percent and 57 percent, respectively - the comparable results for Sunnis four years ago were under 2 percent.

Even the supporters of the firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr are joining the national reconciliation in droves. In this election, they supported several lists of sympathizers and independents.

The exception in this trend may be the vote for the oil-rich state of Kirkuk, whose mixed Arab-Kurdish ethnicity may potentially lead to a massive ethno-sectarian conflagration when elections are held later this year.

Turn from religious, sectarian politics

With the breakdown of social order in the aftermath of the 2003 US invasion, Iraqis turned en masse to their sectarian and religious identities and to groups that best articulated these views. This was due partly to the ideological void left behind after the invasion and partly to the need to defend oneself against the predations of rival communal groups.

Naturally, under these circumstances, economic improvement and welfare took a backseat to "security" as the number one issue of concern for most people.

Starting in 2007, as the level of violence ebbed and general party performance came under scrutiny, many people became greatly disaffected with sectarian- and religious-based politics and the groups that espoused them.

Taking their cue from the public mood, for the first time last year, the Iraqi legislature banned the use and display of religious imagery and symbolism in political campaigns. The ISCI, the largest and most organized religious group in Iraq, is expected to lose many of its seats in this year's election.

In addition, in contrast to four years ago, almost every banner and poster in Iraq was filled in this election with "normal" bread-and-butter or "clean politics" slogans. This reflected the demands for the delivery of better services and accountability of public officials as well as a general turn away from religious sloganeering.

Steep rise in al-Maliki's power base

Six years ago - unlike other Shia groups such as the ISCI and the Sadrists - the Dawa Party, to which Maliki belongs, had very limited resources and support to start with. The party largely came to power because the US favored it over the more pro-Iranian ISCI.

However, in the course of last year, the fortunes of al-Maliki's and his party have changed drastically.

Last spring, al-Maliki successfully took on the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr in their Baghdad and Basra strongholds. Since then, the once-mighty movement has been left badly isolated and demoralized, with Maliki winning much admiration among ordinary Iraqis.

The next move that earned al-Maliki much praise - particularly among the Sunnis - was his adroit maneuvers last year in the disputed northern disputed regions of Kirkuk and Nineva.

Critics, however, see in al-Maliki's rising power the signs of a strongman in the making. Al-Maliki has set up two separate independent security forces that report to him alone and who appear to be tasked with intimidating his opponents.

Likewise, in the southern areas, he has replicated the success of the Tribal Support Councils in the north, and routinely overpasses the local governments in giving federal funds to pet projects. In Basra, currently, much of the money for reconstruction projects is delivered via intermediaries other than the provincial government.

"He (al-Maliki) is funneling lots of money to his tribal and other supporters in Basra and the southern regions for his political campaign," Duhragam al-Ajwadi, an official with the Virtue Party (Fadhila), told ISN Security Watch. "This isn't right."

This criticism aside, many in Iraq long for the rise of a strong hand capable of restoring order again - as ordered was restored under Saddam Hussein. One such individual is Ali Abdul Latif, a cab driver from the Tanouma neighborhood of Basra. "I voted for Maliki because he is not afraid to beat the bastards," he told ISN Security Watch. "We only need a strongman in this country."

Finally, many approve of al-Maliki's move to ensure a speedy withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. In tandem with these and sensing a general secular shift in the country, the prime minister, whose party is Shia fundamentalist, has recently recast himself as an ardent nationalist. The Dawa Party was one of the main groups that supported the opposition's motion in the parliament to ban all religious-leaning political propaganda.

What all this means is that not only is al-Maliki going to receive a large proportion of the votes this year, but the next few months should see a continued rise in his power.

Continued disparity

The last few years have seen a disproportionate use of resources by a handful of players at the expense of the rest. For instance, the ISCI's stranglehold over six of the nine southern provinces - which was made possible through an institutional arrangement with occupying US forces at the time of the invasion - as well as its use of two nationwide TV stations and other instruments, has given it enormous advantages over its rivals.

The same goes for the two main Kurdish groups in the north, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which have basically monopolized access to resources and information. They do not shy away from the use of an iron fist to silence their critics in the Kurdish regions.

Another byproduct of this trend is the predominance of larger groups as opposed to smaller ones. For instance, in this election as opposed to four years ago, the electorate won the right to vote for "open lists," meaning the ability to vote for individuals rather than closed part lists. However, this was as a result of a compromise in the parliament, where large parties acceded to this demand on the condition that voters must vote both for individuals and party lists or their votes would be invalidated.

In Basra, this caused much confusion, and in effect meant that large parties like the ISCI, Dawa and Fadhila would still dominate the local councils. It is not clear if the instances of irregularity (such as those reported by the 11-member secular list in Basra headed by businessman Hatem al-Bachary where many of their candidates' names failed to show up on the vote registry) were systemic or not. But clearly non-affiliated or independent candidates have little chance of winning this year's election.