Electoral commission prepares for polls

Behind the scenes in the Jordanian capital, Amman, workers are racing against the clock to create voter rolls they plan to use to hold elections in Iraq in January 2005. Initially, voter lists will be compiled from databases of the public distribution system of the Oil-for-Food Programme, formerly administered by the United Nations. The Ministry of Trade still uses food ration cards to give Iraqi residents a monthly food basket. Some 60 percent of the country was dependent on food aid. Residents will be able to look at the list for six weeks in November and December to make corrections, Carlos Valenzuela, chief electoral officer for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI), told IRIN. "Voters can challenge the list," Valenzuela said. "We don't have time to worry too much. The timetable is very short." All international UN staff were evacuated from Iraq last August, following a devastating bombing which killed 22 people. A team is now working from Amman, with some election workers making trips to Iraq. An independent election commission of eight Iraqis is running the show, Valenzuela said. The United Nations' role is to monitor the preparations and to "ensure that their decisions meet international standards and that there is confidence in the general population for the election". "We have an independent electoral commission. All we do is provide advice," Valenzuela said. "Because the UN is involved, it is a guarantee that the list is not manipulated," he added. At the same time, a US general told journalists on Sunday that violence may prevent the authorities from holding elections in such hot spots as the central western city of Fallujah. The "cancer" of anti-American militants will not derail elections, said Lt-Gen Thomas Metz, operations chief of the more than 150,000 mostly US troops in Iraq. A "contingency" plan would be to bypass Fallujah and possibly other hostile cities, where recent battles between US troops and insurgents have taken place, Metz said. US troops have not patrolled in places such as Fallujah, Ramadi or Samarrah, west and north of Baghdad, in some cases since April. Elections must be held in Iraq's three largest cities - Baghdad, Mosul in the north, and Basra in the south - for there to be validity, Metz said. His statements are among the strongest to date to address how security problems could affect election plans. Valenzuela said the electoral authority should decide election rules, not US forces. He did not address the security issue directly, except to say that his staff had been all over the country, including the cities of Basra and Nasiriyah in the south and Kirkuk in the north. "One thing you do try is to make it neutral, not have a perception that Americans are involved," Valenzuela said. Iraqis are optimistic that the security situation will get better, Farid Ayar, a spokesman for the election commission, told IRIN. They're also very excited to be able to vote freely in any forthcoming election, Ayar said. "For the first time, people will be free to elect any candidate," he pointed out. In elections under Saddam Hussein, people could vote, but the polls were not free and fair and would be watched by the secret police to make sure people voted a certain way, Ayar explained. The biggest job for the commission is to make sure the voter lists are seen as being above manipulation. "Every Iraqi should have documents proving who he is. An expert will check all of the documents. We will do our best to make sure nothing gets past us," he maintained. Critics have charged that people coming to Iraq from Iran and other neighbouring countries may be able to register to vote, even though they were not born in Iraq, or do not have documents to prove they were Iraqi residents at one point. The election commission is expected to organise 7,000-9,000 polling stations, each one staffed by at least four people, Valenzuela said. The number of staff hired to help with the election could reach more than 1,000. About 35 United Nations staff are currently in Baghdad working on various election-related issues. Election commissioners have decided that a census expected to be held in October will not be used in connection with the voter list, Valenzuela said. Most other election rules are laid out in a transitional administrative law, or TAL, a legal document written by US-led administrators and approved by a former appointed Iraqi government before sovereignty was handed back to Iraqis in late June. The elections scheduled for January are actually expected to be three separate polls: one to elect a national assembly in central and southern Iraq, another to elect an assembly in northern, or Kurdish, regions of Iraq, and a third in each of the country's 18 governorates to elect a council, Valenzuela said. "That's one of the major problems for us - that elections are simultaneous," Valenzuela said. "It causes a lot of problems, but once it's in the law, how do you change it?"