Imperative vote

Despite growing pressure Iraq's Sunnis seem likely to maintain their elections boycott, reports Omayma Abdel-Latif

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An Iraqi man reads an election leaflet in Baghdad

Held by claws Eyeing the polls A long and winding road

Friday sermons across Baghdad carried the same message -- the real debate is not about whether elections should be held but how they can be when Iraq still labours under a ruthless occupation.

"We all support holding the elections," Mahmoud Al- Somaidai, imam of Um Al-Qura Mosque in Baghdad told his audience, "but they must be free and fair and should be held when Iraq is free from occupation."

Al-Somaidai's views are shared by the young Shia leader Muqtada Al-Sadr who, in his Friday sermon at Al-Mohsen Mosque in Sadr City, said he will accept to participate in elections only on the condition that US troops are withdrawn.

"I will keep away from elections," Al-Sadr told his followers, "until the occupiers leave my country."

It is an argument that has increasingly come to dominate the public debate over Iraq's elections. Harith Al-Dhari, head of the Muslim Clerics' Association (MCA), Iraq's most prominent Sunni group campaigning for a postponement of the poll, said that despite the fact that the MCA was not participating in the elections they would still accept the results, though not without conditions.

"We will accept and give full support to a Shia-dominated government provided that it draws a timeline for the withdrawal of occupation troops," Al-Dhari told the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper on Monday. He downplayed any differences with Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, Iraq's leading Shia cleric, over the date of elections. Al-Sistani is a staunch advocate of elections being held on time.

Iraq's interim government is racing against time to rally forces to participate in the elections. This week it was engaged in frantic, last-minute efforts to secure the participation of groups that have called for elections to be rescheduled. Sunni, as well as the Shia forces -- particularly the Al-Sadr movement -- have all been courted.

There is a growing consensus in political and religious Shia circles that an election that does not involve effective Sunni participation will undermine the whole political process in Iraq. Abdul-Aziz Al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the leading candidate on Iraq's most popular electoral list (the Unified Iraqi Alliance), points out that "Iraq's Sunnis must be represented in any future government regardless of the elections results."

Al-Hakim's statement came on the heels of Al-Sistani's own attempts to squash any triumphalism among those predicting "a Shia victory" in the forthcoming elections. Al-Sistani sent his envoy, Hamid Al-Khafaf, to Cairo last week with a clear message: "Iraq's new constitution, to be drafted by the newly elected national assembly, will not be inspired by sectarian considerations and... the voice of all Iraqis must be heard in the debate on the constitution."

The Shia establishment is not the only group seeking to pressure Sunnis to reconsider their stand vis-à-vis elections. The Americans intervened in the debate when the US ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, paid a visit to the headquarters of the Muslim Clerics' Association (MCA) on Sunday. Negroponte, who met Al-Dhari and other MCA members, attempted to persuade them to participate in the elections. Abdul-Salam Al-Qubeisi, a senior member of the association, revealed Al-Dhari had made any reconsideration of the MCA's stance dependent on two conditions.

"We have made it clear that a timeline for the withdrawal of US troops must be put forward and that Falluja residents should be compensated for the destruction that has been inflicted on their city," Al-Qubeisi told reporters. While the MCA had not yet received a response to its demands Al- Qubeisi said that negotiations with US authorities would continue.

"If the Americans say they will stay one or two more years, this could be discussed in an acceptable manner but it must be made clear that no American soldier will stay on Iraqi soil after that date," explained Al-Qubeisi.

But were these last ditch attempts enough to persuade those Iraqi forces that have decided to boycott the elections to review their position?

"No," says Iyad Al-Samaraai, spokesperson of the Iraqi Islamist Party. "We have made clear demands in order that the electoral process be effective and representative of all Iraqis," he explained. Those demands, he says, have not been met.

"What we get are calls to participate instead of genuine attempts to change the reality on the ground," Al-Samaraai told Al-Ahram Weekl y in a telephone interview from Baghdad.

Al-Samaraai puts much of the blame for this on the Iraqi government which, he believes, has failed miserably to provide the kind of security situation in which elections could be held. The government failed to initiate a process of national dialogue among Iraq's political and ethnic groups and, together with the US occupation authorities "has failed to provide the circumstances conducive to a fair, free and safe electoral process."

"Elections," says Al-Samaraai, "should not be the endgame but only the beginning of a long process," Al-Samaraai said that the Iraqi Islamic Party and other Sunni forces were willing to give the newly-elected government a grace period before passing any judgement. "In the end," he pointed out, "what we want is a government that represents the interests of all Iraqis and not those of a sect or ethnic group. Our judgement will be based on the agenda of the government rather than its composition."

At the heart of the ongoing debate over the elections, says Essam Al-Rawi, a member of the MCA's Shura Council, is the question of whether they should be held at all while the country is under occupation. "The debate on elections is skewed in a way that deliberately ignores the context in which they will take place. Our stand is not against a much needed political process but against an occupation that undermines the legitimacy of that very process."