Iraq's religious leaders urge strong voter turnout

Final days of campaign for Sunday's national poll have been rocked by series of deadly suicide bombings.

By Ali al-Tuwaijri - BAQUBA

Religious leaders on Friday ordered Iraqis to vote in weekend parliamentary elections to safeguard the war-wracked nation's fledgling democracy and to ensure the ballot is unhindered by fraud.

The final days of the campaign for Sunday's national poll, the second since US-led troops ousted Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003, have been rocked by a series of suicide bombings that left dozens dead.

Some of the 6,200 candidates from across Iraq's complex religious and ethnic spectrum made television and radio appearances at the end of a campaign in which public meetings and street electioneering were largely absent.

Religious leaders, both Shiite and Sunni, used Friday prayers to tell their followers they must vote.

"You must go to the voting centers because it is your duty," said Sheikh Abdulrahman al-Jorani, Sunni imam of the Al-Hai mosque in the central city of Baquba, where 33 people were killed in three suicide attacks on Wednesday.

"Even if you don't want to vote, go to the voting centers to destroy your electoral papers so they cannot be forged by others fraudulently."

The appeals for strong voter turnout came as more than one million Iraqis living abroad began voting in an election where Sunnis are expected to cast ballots in large numbers, in stark contrast to their 2005 boycott of the poll.

Ahmed al-Safi, a representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini al-Sistani, the nation's top Shiite cleric, said the election was a "huge vital issue", essential to ensuring that Iraqis can "draw their own future."

"Turning away from voting, or having small participation in the elections for any reason, will give others a chance to achieve their illegal goals," said Safi at prayers in the holy city of Karbala, south of Baghdad.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, the Shiite head of the State of Law Alliance who this week boasted he was "certain" of victory, was due to give a press conference later on Friday in a final push to win support.

An estimated 1.4 million Iraqis from the war-shattered country's diaspora began to cast their votes Friday in 80 cities in 16 different countries.

Ahmed Fuad, a 22-year-old student, said as he emerged from a polling station in Amman in neighboring Jordan that he backed Shiite ex-premier Iyad Allawi, whose secular Iraqiya list has strong support in Sunni areas.

"I hope the situation will improve there (in Iraq) so we can go back to our country. We are fed up with homesickness," said Fuad.

Thursday, a day of early voting for hundreds of thousands of soldiers and police due to work Sunday, was marred by two suicide attacks at polling centers that killed seven troops and a mortar attack that killed seven civilians.

Those attacks came despite a massive security operation that saw 200,000 police and soldiers deployed in the capital alone.

Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq Abu Omar al-Baghdadi had threatened to disrupt the election by "military means" but so far no group has claimed responsibility for this week's violence.

The US military sees Sunday's poll as a crucial precursor to a withdrawal of combat troops in August and said it would continue to provide Iraqi security forces with intelligence, logistical and air support for the election.

Sunday's vote will usher in a government tasked with tackling violence, an economy in tatters and state institutions mired in corruption.

A Shiite is almost certain to become prime minister.

Shiites were united in the 2005 polls but this time round are divided, a development hailed by some as a move away from rigid sectarian politics.

Also competing with Maliki and Allawi for the top job are former deputy premier Ahmed Chalabi, who was once favored but is now loathed by Washington, Shiite Vice President Adel Abdel Mahdi and Finance Minister Baqer Jaber Solagh.

Under Iraq's electoral system no one party will emerge with the 163 seats needed to form a government on its own and the ensuing horse-trading to form a governing coalition is likely to be protracted.

"It's hard to put an actual timeframe on it, but we are talking months, not weeks," a senior US official said in Washington on Thursday.

"We anticipate a difficult process," full of challenges and claims of fraud "because the stakes are so high," the official added, asking not to be identified.

Source: Middle East Online.
Link: http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=37658.