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I see the Shia have learned well from the American Republicans. Voter suppression, fraud, intimidation......
Remember, it's the Iraqi Sunnis who are also primarily fueling the insurgency, not the "terrorists" jihadis.
The insurgency exists purely as a creation of dubya's bull invasion. It has nothing to do with the war on terror.
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washingtonpost.com
Sunnis Allege Fraud, Demand New Iraq Elections
Conservative Shiite Coalition Emerges as Early Leader in Parliamentary Returns
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, December 20, 2005; 3:27 PM
BAGHDAD, Dec. 20 -- Sunni and secular political parties angrily claimed Tuesday that Iraq's national election was rigged, threatening to leave in shambles the delicate plan to bring Iraq's wary factions together in a new government.
Faced with an emerging strong victory by the religious Shiite group that has close ties to Iran, the minority Sunnis demanded a new election and hinted darkly that the violence of the insurgency would be accelerated by the su ions of fraud.
"What would we tell those whom we indirectly convinced to stop the attacks during the election period?" demanded Adnan Dulaimi, a chief of the main Sunni coalition. "What would we tell those people who wanted to boycott [the election] and we convinced them to participate?"
The preliminary results, he said, are "not in the interest of stability of the country."
Former prime minister Ayad Allawi, whose secular slate appeared likely to take a small, fourth-place role in the government, also questioned the results of Thursday's polling and called a meeting for Wednesday of other groups angry with the outcome.
And Salah Mutlak, who headed an independent Sunni slate, said, "I don't think there is any practical point for us for being in this National Assembly if things stay like this."
"This election is completely false. It insults democracy everywhere. Everything was based on fraud, cheating, frightening people, and using religion to frighten the people," he said. "It is terrorism more than democracy." Mutlak said he had expected to capture 70 parliament seats, but he said he seemed likely to get fewer than 20, according to the preliminary results.
U.S. officials continued to praise the conduct of the election, and Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari downplayed the complaints in an appearance on Iraqi television Tuesday night.
The election, he said, "should be seen as a victory for all Iraqis regardless of any doubts or skepticism."
The campaign leading to Thursday's national election was marked by assassinations of candidates and workers, attacks on party offices and heightened violence. But the balloting itself was hailed by diverse quarters -- including President Bush -- as an overall success.
As the results emerged this week, however, the cries of fraud and ballot-rigging have surged.
With more than 95 percent of the ballot boxes counted, the coalition of conservative religious Shiite groups appeared poised to dominate the four-year parliament and the selection of the country's prime minister.
Electoral commission members cautioned that the results must be checked and cross-checked, and the allegations of election violations must be settled before the results are declared final. That process might last into January, said commission official Farid Ayar.
He said Tuesday that among the 1,000 complaints received so far, about 20 were serious enough to affect the vote. The complaints included "some forgeries, fraud, and use of force and efforts to intimidate," he told reporters. "We will study all of these very carefully."
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad insisted Tuesday that "overall, from what we know so far, the election went very well."
"It's too soon to speak definitively about the results, but everyone, all the communities, participated," he said. "That was very important. That was a significant step."
The United States had worked strenuously behind the scenes to try to reverse the decision of the Sunni minority leaders to boycott last January's election of an interim government. American and Iraqi officials argued that if the Sunnis are part of the government, they may help dampen the violent insurgency believed to be led by Sunni guerrilla fighters who have lost power with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
And bringing the Sunnis together with the Shiites and Kurds could help prevent a break-up of Iraq into warring factions, they believed.
They convinced the Sunnis to participate in this election. But the preliminary results indicate the Sunni parties fared more poorly than they thought. So, too, did secular groups such as that of Allawi and Ahmed Chalabi, who as an exiled Iraqi had helped convince the Bush administration to go to war.
The final distribution of seats in the 275-member National Assembly will be decided by a complicated formula after the results are finalized. The formula is based on turnout and skewed to reward small parties by giving them some representation in the assembly.
But the initial calculations showed that the Shiite religious list had overwhelming victories in 10 of Iraq's 18 provinces, including the most populous, Baghdad. The Kurds swept the three northernmost provinces where they are based.
The Sunni vote in provinces of central Iraq was splintered between the main Sunni coalition, Dulaimi's party, and, in the central Iraqi province of Salahuddin, by a small party headed by Mishan Jaburi.
Although he is a Shiite, Allawi's party also drew away some of the Sunni voters who oppose the Shiite religious slate. There was much speculation that Allawi would capitalize on dissatisfaction with the religious political leaders, but his party got only 14 percent of the votes in Baghdad, and a lower percentage in other provinces.
"It looks like people preferred to vote for their ethnic or sectarian iden y," Khalilzad acknowledged to reporters. "But for Iraq to succeed, there has to be cross-sectarian and cross-ethnic cooperation. At this point, it seems sectarian and ethnic iden y has played a dominant role in the vote."
Even before the voting began, Sunni leaders had already said the country's electoral system was stacked against them.
The number of parliamentary seats allocated to each province was based on numbers of registered voters rather than population, since no reliable census exists for much of the country. That short-changed Sunni regions which boycotted the January elections, said B .B .Abdul Qadir, an official with the Iraqi Islamic Party.
Overall, the four provinces with the largest Sunni populations have eight fewer seats than they should, according to Qadir's analysis, which he presented to Iraqi election officials. Provinces in the Kurdish north and Shiite south gained extra seats because of the way they were allocated, he said.
"Sunni Arabs who suffered great injustice and elimination in the previous period feel hope now, but a serious danger is threatening this conciliation," he wrote in his report. "Is it a conspiracy against the Sunni Arabs? Absolutely yes."
U.S. official in Fallujah, a city in Anbar, who spoke on the condition that he not be named, said there was some validity to the Sunni leaders' belief they were given too few seats, but said the total shortfall was probably closer to a few seats total.
Correspondent Jonathan Finer contributed to this report.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
I see the Shia have learned well from the American Republicans. Voter suppression, fraud, intimidation......
Or from the American Democrats:
When you vote, and your guy loses... , complain, and claim that there must have been foul play.
"there must have been foul play."
http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/vote2000/florida.htm
etc, etc, etc.
You know you gotta stop counting the hanging chads and come up with
something that will make people really vote you for the dimm-o-craps.
You got to have a policy, not blame the Republicans who have one,
and all you can say: They are wrong.
Yeah, there was no Voter fraud in 00 and 04.
GAO Report Upholds Ohio Vote Fraud Claims
By what right do we have to 'spread Democracy in the M.E.' when we have a puppet government in power in the U.S.?
Yeah, there was no Voter fraud in 00 and 04.
GAO Report Upholds Ohio Vote Fraud Claims
By what right do we have to 'spread Democracy in the M.E.' when we have a puppet government in power in the U.S.?
Oh Dan, for goodness sakes, ever heard of South Texas? The voted for
LBJ in alphabetical order. Ever heard of Daly in Chicago, JFK? Get
serious man. Every election has it naysayers. How many times did
they count the votes in the last primary for Democrats south of here,
cant remember the candidates names, but it involved every county
south of here all the way to Laredo. Cuellar, I think was one of the
candidates.
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