2010 Parliamentary Election

The story of the Iraqi Accountability and Justice and Election Commissions’ banning of 500 candidates from the March 2010 voting for alleged Baathist ties has taken a few new turns. First, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has finally come out in favor of the ban. He said that the decision of the Accountability and Justice Commission should be adhered to.

Iraq is entering its seventh year since the U.S. invasion. Many things have changed in that time period, from the chaos that followed the collapse of the state after Saddam was overthrown, to the civil war that erupted, to the Surge. At the end of 2009 three Iraq analysts, Sam Parker of the United States Institute for Peace, Michael Hanna of the Century Foundation, and Reidar Visser of the Norwegian Institute of International Relations, wrote pieces speculating on what lay ahead for Iraq.

Just before midnight on December 6, 2009 Iraq’s parliament passed a second draft of the election law. The new legislation mixes versions of the original law and the amended version, and seems to be headed for confirmation by the Presidential Council.

Parliamentarian Mahmoud Othman, a leader in the Kurdish Alliance, was quoted in the November 28, 2009 New York Times summing up the problems with Iraqi politics. When asked about the possibility that the country would hold elections past the January 31, 2009 deadline set in the constitution he replied, “So what? Nothing in Iraq is very legitimate.” Every major piece of legislation and decision in Iraq is endlessly delayed because of power politics and a zero-sum attitude by law makers.

On October 1, 2009 Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki officially announced his State of Law list that would compete in the 2010 parliamentary elections.

On November 8, 2009 Iraq’s parliament finally passed an election bill after weeks of delay. Ten days later Vice President Tarqi al-Hashemi vetoed it.

Iraq’s parliament has spent months debating and negotiating over the 2010 election law. While it has discussed several issues such as the status of Kirkuk and voting for overseas Iraqis, nothing has really been said about Iraq’s internally displaced. The result is that many will likely be disenfranchised as happened in the 2009 balloting.

Iraq’s 2010 parliamentary election law was finally passed by the legislature on November 8, 2009. It was then sent to the Presidential Council that consists of President Jalal Talabani, Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi and Vice President Tarqi al-Hashemi for ratification. It was expected that they would immediately sign the bill into law as it was originally supposed to be done in October. Instead, the legislation has run into more and more problems.

In the days after parliament finally passed the 2010 parliamentary election bill, both President Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, formerly of the Iraqi Sunni Party, and now part of the new Iraqi National Movement, have called for it to be revised. They are both requesting that the number of seats set aside for refugees and minorities be increased.

On the night of November 8, 2009, Iraq’s parliament finally passed the 2010 election law. 195 of the 175 members were present, with 141 voting for the bill. As mentioned before, the law was originally supposed to be passed on October 16, but disputes over how to conduct voting in Tamim, home to the disputed city of Kirkuk, and whether to use an open or closed list voting system, delayed the proceedings.