KurdistanObserver.com

Kurds To Decide Who Wields Power

By Nicolas Rothwell
January 26, 2005

news.com.au network

PERCHED like a peaked cap on Iraq's sprawling torso, the Kurdish northern enclave is set to emerge as the strong winner from Sunday's elections and will almost certainly hold the balance of power in the new national assembly.

Although Kurdistan has only a fifth of Iraq's population, its two main regional parties have combined for the poll and are running a unified list of Kurdish candidates.

"Kurds know more than anyone in Iraq the importance of this election as a factor in their future," says local political organiser Mustafa Omer.

"They understand how crucial it is that they assert their place as the second-largest national group in the country.

"They have suffered in the struggle they waged for their rights for 10 years under Saddam Hussein, and they have had the experience of voting in local elections, so they are already well-educated in democracy."

The expected upshot, according to observers in the regional capital of Suleimaniyah, is that Kurds will turn out in large numbers on polling day. And their votes should help bring into being an Iraqi government strongly influenced by the pro-Western Kurdish leadership.

The newly established Iraqi national assembly will have 275 members. The Kurdistan Alliance is expected to win at least 40 to 50 seats, returned by voters in the three northern provinces of Suleimaniyah, Arbil and Dohuk.

And the figure may be significantly higher if voter turnout in the rest of the violence-torn country are low.

Kurdistan, protected by 80,000 peshmerga fighters, is relatively peaceful and prosperous. As The Economist magazine put it recently, locals like to say visitors from the rest of Iraq are leaving a state of emergency and entering an emerging state.

Kurdish political analyst Tofiq Abdol expects the Kurdish bloc in the new parliament to swing behind the centrist current in Iraqi politics once the post-election horse-trading begins, and believes this support will strengthen the hand of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

"My conviction is that Kurdish politicians will align themselves with the forces in Iraq, led by Allawi, that have secular tendencies," he says.

There is a high level of co-operation between Allawi and Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani. And Iraq's interim president, Sheikh Gazi Al-Yawar, a Sunni, is a frequent visitor to the Kurdish enclave, and married to a Kurdish politician.

These connections form the groundwork for a post-election compact that shape shape the agenda of Iraqi politics over the next year, while a new constitution is being drafted.

Given the probable arithmetic of the parliamentary assembly, no single political group will be able to form a government. This is because the majority Shia population, which makes up 60 per cent of the electorate, will divide its support between Allawi's secular Iraqi List party and the Shia House group backed by religious leader Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani.

The Sunnis, who make up the remaining fifth of the electorate, may not be inclined to vote in large numbers, given the security crisis in their region and the high-profile calls to boycott the poll by their leading parties.

But the consensus of observers in the north is that strong security will encourage a moderate participation rate. "I predict in the southern regions of Iraq, the Shia and Sunni areas, voting levels of 50 to 65 per cent, with the Shia vote running stronger," Abdol says.

Such figures point to the complex coalition-building ahead. To create a stable governing majority, the next prime minister will need an alliance that reaches well beyond the Kurdish bloc and a single Shia party.

If Allawi's group performs well, it will still need to gain the support of the Shia House, and a Sunni party. Hence the future Iraqi government will be developed on the basis of wide co-operation between the different ethnic groups that compose the country.

"It should be a mixture, the new parliament," Abdol says. "It has been designed in such a way that no single group can form the government on its own, and so it will have to proceed as a coalition of interests, with give-and-take on all sides."

And so, as Iraq heads for its assignation with electoral freedom, its leaders are nervously aware that demography condemns them all to a path of compromise.