Free Iraqi Elections?
the part of the usuk/interim governments
Question: In which way could the interim government and the US/UK have made the elections more democratic in the spirit of the word democratic and less in form?
1. By letting it be possible for the Iraqi people of different religious and ethnic groups to decide how they see the future of iraq i.e. not write an interim/USUK made Constitution which will be very hard to change once the parliament is in place.
2. By not intervening in Iraq's economic affairs and selling previously state owned companies to foreign private firms and letting the iraqi's participate in building up iraq themselves.
3. By either leaving Iraq after the intervention or trying to make the place as peaceful as possible by not intervening in the internal affairs of the iraqi's, which they clearly have by installing a government favourably to their own needs; by first putting someone like Paul Bremer as an interim Leader of the Government and later Illad Allawi who used to live in America and work for the CIA and companies involved in the reconstruction of Iraq.
4. And probably by paying the iraqi's a rather big amount of dollars for reconstruction of iraq (which the US/UK government clearly did not do)
5. By not instigating acts of violence, bombings and treating prisoners more humanely without torture or making prisoners disappear.
6. By creating an atmosphere in which different groups could make clear their views on iraq and people would know in due advance for whom they could vote. By making it save enough in iraq so that everyone could vote without having to fear acts of violence.
These can be seen I think as the basic undemocratic back-grounds to this election, which does not make the possibility of there emerging a democratic government in Iraq a very plausible one as these factors diminish the actual value of an iraqi vote to represent themselves.
In which way are the interim government and the USUK responsible for the creation of the security situation in Iraq at the moment and how could they have achieved a better situation?
There are here again several points to make. First of all it is necessary to point out that the Iraqi and Arab fighters who fight the occupation forces are made up of different groups, which have different ideas and ways of fighting the occupation. Some fanatical groups including the group of Al-Zarquawi commit equal amounts of violence against Iraqi civilians, whom they see as traitors, as they do against the occupation forces and the foreign civilians that came with them, or even more. Others like the Shia groups around Al'Sadr were mainly fighting the occupation forces, without purposely harming the Iraqi civilians. The structure of the resistance is to my knowledge different than for example in Vietnam in that the different ethnic and religious groups of iraq have very different ideologies and goals. Then there are probably even other groups which are not named in the news and are all garbaged under the name of insurgency or terrorist fighters.
A second point to make is the reaction of the interim government and their sponsors, the occupation forces to violence. It is commonly said that violence only breads violence, and in the way the occupation forces react to acts of resistance or plain by means of armed up-rise or use of terror only will lead the resistance groups to become more violent or more resistant and gain popularity among the part of the Iraqi population which comes to see the occupation forces as not legitimate and do not want their excessive use of force.
How well was the election monitored?
1. The election was monitored by international observers from the IEMI. It is not easy to oversee wether election irregularities have occurred and it will probably not be possible to know how well the election structure functioned or wether people were forced to vote something. Dahr Jamail reported people voting to get some food in Bagdad (Dahr Jamail, 31 January 2005)
2. The IMIE (The International Mission for Iraqi Elections) stated there were 23.000 domestic monitors from parties and 18.000 non-partisan monitors from 92 observer organisations. at approximately 14.2 million voters and 29.000 Polling stations. The IECI(Independent Electoral Commision of Iraq) was created by Paul Bremer when he was still in charge and consists of 1000 people.
Question: In which way could the interim government and the US/UK have made the elections more democratic in the spirit of the word democratic and less in form?
1. By letting it be possible for the Iraqi people of different religious and ethnic groups to decide how they see the future of iraq i.e. not write an interim/USUK made Constitution which will be very hard to change once the parliament is in place.
2. By not intervening in Iraq's economic affairs and selling previously state owned companies to foreign private firms and letting the iraqi's participate in building up iraq themselves.
3. By either leaving Iraq after the intervention or trying to make the place as peaceful as possible by not intervening in the internal affairs of the iraqi's, which they clearly have by installing a government favourably to their own needs; by first putting someone like Paul Bremer as an interim Leader of the Government and later Illad Allawi who used to live in America and work for the CIA and companies involved in the reconstruction of Iraq.
4. And probably by paying the iraqi's a rather big amount of dollars for reconstruction of iraq (which the US/UK government clearly did not do)
5. By not instigating acts of violence, bombings and treating prisoners more humanely without torture or making prisoners disappear.
6. By creating an atmosphere in which different groups could make clear their views on iraq and people would know in due advance for whom they could vote. By making it save enough in iraq so that everyone could vote without having to fear acts of violence.
These can be seen I think as the basic undemocratic back-grounds to this election, which does not make the possibility of there emerging a democratic government in Iraq a very plausible one as these factors diminish the actual value of an iraqi vote to represent themselves.
In which way are the interim government and the USUK responsible for the creation of the security situation in Iraq at the moment and how could they have achieved a better situation?
There are here again several points to make. First of all it is necessary to point out that the Iraqi and Arab fighters who fight the occupation forces are made up of different groups, which have different ideas and ways of fighting the occupation. Some fanatical groups including the group of Al-Zarquawi commit equal amounts of violence against Iraqi civilians, whom they see as traitors, as they do against the occupation forces and the foreign civilians that came with them, or even more. Others like the Shia groups around Al'Sadr were mainly fighting the occupation forces, without purposely harming the Iraqi civilians. The structure of the resistance is to my knowledge different than for example in Vietnam in that the different ethnic and religious groups of iraq have very different ideologies and goals. Then there are probably even other groups which are not named in the news and are all garbaged under the name of insurgency or terrorist fighters.
A second point to make is the reaction of the interim government and their sponsors, the occupation forces to violence. It is commonly said that violence only breads violence, and in the way the occupation forces react to acts of resistance or plain by means of armed up-rise or use of terror only will lead the resistance groups to become more violent or more resistant and gain popularity among the part of the Iraqi population which comes to see the occupation forces as not legitimate and do not want their excessive use of force.
How well was the election monitored?
1. The election was monitored by international observers from the IEMI. It is not easy to oversee wether election irregularities have occurred and it will probably not be possible to know how well the election structure functioned or wether people were forced to vote something. Dahr Jamail reported people voting to get some food in Bagdad (Dahr Jamail, 31 January 2005)
2. The IMIE (The International Mission for Iraqi Elections) stated there were 23.000 domestic monitors from parties and 18.000 non-partisan monitors from 92 observer organisations. at approximately 14.2 million voters and 29.000 Polling stations. The IECI(Independent Electoral Commision of Iraq) was created by Paul Bremer when he was still in charge and consists of 1000 people.
posted by Tjerk at 11:45 PM
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