Iraqi elections set for Jan. 30

By Seattle Times news services

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The balloting, however, remains imperiled by calls for a Sunni Muslim boycott and a persistent insurgency that has roiled Sunni regions.

"There is no possibility under these circumstances for people to do a proper filling of forms and registration," said Ayad Samarrai, a spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic Party, whose leader has called for a postponement of the vote.

Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, has insisted the rebellion will be crushed by U.S. troops and their Iraqi allies before voting takes place, and Shiite religious leaders such as Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani have pushed hard for a vote to take place on time.

Posters have gone up in Shiite neighborhoods endorsing the elections, and even anti-American clerics such as Muqtada al-Sadr have stopped short of joining the largely Sunni boycott.

The election will choose a 275-member National Assembly. In turn, that body will select a new government to replace the present, appointed leadership and oversee the drafting of a constitution. If the constitution is ratified, another election will be held in December 2005 to seat a permanent government.

Campaigning for the election is to begin Dec. 15.

While acknowledging that security was a problem, Hussain Hindawi, chairman of the nine-member electoral commission, said 198 parties and individuals already had filed to run and 126 had been approved.

"It was a very large number, and we feel proud about that," he said.

But at least 46 Iraqi religious and political parties have announced they will not participate in the electoral process, many of them because of fighting in Fallujah.

Commission members said they planned to extend polling to even the most dangerous of Iraqi hotspots, including cities such as Fallujah and Ramadi to the west, and areas south of Baghdad, where carjackings and assassinations are more common.
 
Farid Ayar, spokesman for the electoral commission, insisted "no Iraqi province will be excluded because the law considers Iraq as one constituency, and therefore it is not legal to exclude any province."

The clerical leadership of the country's Shiite community, thought to comprise about 60 percent of Iraq's nearly 26 million people, has been clamoring for an election since the April 2003 collapse of the Saddam Hussein regime, and voting is expected to go smoothly in northern areas ruled by the Kurds, the most pro-American group.

However, Sunni Arabs, estimated at about 20 percent of the population, fear domination by the Shiites.

Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in Washington that it is important that the elections be held as promised. "If they are delayed, it would be a sign that the chaos, terror, can succeed in destroying whatever chance we have for democracy in Iraq," he said.

Compiled from The Washington Post, The Associated Press and Knight Ridder Newspapers.