<p>How brave the Iraqi people are to have turned out today for the elections. Latest CNN report is 60% of eligible voters voted, comparable to the US elections last November. Obviously, this doesn’t mark the end, but it does mark a beginning.</p>
<p>I agree it’s an important milestone, but best guess would be that 85% of eligible people in Kurdistan and the Shiia areas voted and less than 10% of the Sunnis voted, which would produce about a 60% turnout overall. (But it’s also true that nobody knows the actual turnout yet. Also, when they report figures like this they don’t know the true size of the eligible population – remember, no census was done. So the turnout figures will at best reflect the % of those who registered, not the % of those who were eligible to vote.)</p>
<p>In any case, this is an important and hopeful stage and it will certainly be instructive to see what happens in the next days and weeks.</p>
<p>I was wondering if/whne someone would create a post about this. Thanks Carolyn.</p>
<p>Here is what surprises me - and I don’t know if I understand this correctly - but I think I do.</p>
<p>I was watching CNN the other day and they were interviewing a woman from Iraq who is involved in the women’s movement over there. Actually, I think she’s at one of the Universities here now. I tuned in late and was rushing around - but this is what I thought she said:</p>
<p>None of the candidates have been identified by name or face. They are only known by a number. They identify their platform - anonymously - and people vote for their platform. She was responding to questions about how the female candidates could survive the process without being kidnapped and killed. Her response was the nobody knows who the female candidates are, as no candidates have been identified. </p>
<p>Is this right?</p>
<p>Mackinaw, Good point. Although the US figures for voting are always based on registered voters not eligible voters as well. It would be very interesting to see how many folks in the US are eligible to vote but don’t even register, wouldn’t it?</p>
<p>Momsdream, Haven’t read or heard this — If you saw the long ballots they were handing out, seems plausible though.</p>
<p>Living in the world’s largest Islamic democracy I always believed that the Iraqi people would find a way to make democracy work. I’m glad they people proved the cynics wrong: To say that Arabs or Muslims or Arab Muslim women or anybody can’t handle democracy is condescending and just plain nonsense. My God, we (the US) barely got a 60% turnout without having to worry about being blown to bits at the polling station! 22 countries in the Arab league and this is the only one that can hold its officials accountable to the people. Who’s next?</p>
<p>My understanding is that they voted for political parties not for individuals. The parties will be allowed to send representatives to the 275-member National Assembly in proportion to the percentage of the vote that they receive. The Assembly will then draft the constitution and elect the president and prime minister leading up a direct election at the end of the year. It’s a complicated process. I’m sure it will be messy, democracy always is.</p>
<p>thanks momrath. So, even though these women are members of the party, there is still no guarantee that they’ll be selected to be part of the National Assembly.</p>
<p>Momsdream, It is my understanding that there is a requirement that at least a certain percentage of those elected to the assembly HAVE to be women. I believe the percentage is something like 35%.</p>
<p>Carolyn, I’m a lot less optimistic. We’ve “turned the corner” in Iraq on several occasions and each time it’s been proved false. (Or, we’ve turned the corner so many times that we’ve gone around in a circle.) An election and the veneer of democracy does nothing to change the underlying ethnic/religious/cultural plate tectonics…and while we can blame a lot of <em>that</em> on Versailles, it doesn’t change the fact of its existence. The civic culture of Iraq is still predominantly based on family/clan/tribe and nepotism is a virtue, not a vice. The Shiites have been quite up until now because all they had to do to gain power was to do nothing. Now that they’ll have it, the intramural jockeying will be interesting to see…as in “interesting times.” And if the US or Israel takes a shot at Iran, Iraqi Shiite attitudes will re-set in a flash.</p>
<p>Momrath, Indonesia has always seemed, for lack of a better word, mellow.</p>
<p>I’m not a Bush supporter and did not vote for him. But I was impressed with the elections yesterday. It does seem like a beginning. In some parts of the country it was very impressive; and the fact that there was a good turnout in Baghdad was impressive too.</p>
<p>TheDad, I wouldn’t say I’m optimistic either - at least not in the sense that we will be bringing our troops home tommorrow or any time soon. But, I do think the election marked a start, as achat said, and sent a signal on many fronts that the Iraqi people do want something different. Will it be a long road to get to democracy as we know it in Iraq? Undoubtably. But, at least now there is a tangible possibility ahead.</p>
<p>Did anyone else notice this: the photo of the voters waiting in line on the cover of my newspaper was all men.</p>
<p>What up with that?</p>
<p>SBmom, I believe they had separate voting lines for men and women. Women definitely participated. Any one know the number or percentage?</p>
<p>TheDad, I can think of many words for Indonesia, but “mellow” would not be one, especially for Java which is where 80% of the people live. Downright weird is more like it. In the ten years that I’ve lived here we’ve experienced riots, bombs, terrorist attacks, islamic extremism, impeachments, elections, secessions, evacuations, a zillion travel warnings, plus acts of God including doughts, floods, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and now a tsunami with 150,000 dead and millions homeless! In spite of it all the country lurches forward. I compare the psyche to a presumably dormant volcano – mellow until it explodes!</p>
<p>But, on topic, after 350 years of colonial rule and dictatorships, the Indonesian people have embraced democracy with vigor. Hardly perfectly, but optimistically. I think the same thing will happen in Iraq and that it WILL spread to the other Arab countries.</p>
<p>I’m glad the vote occurred, and many of the people appear to be thrilled to have the election. But I do admit to a little skepticism. </p>
<p>For instance, how do we calculate the percentage of eligible voters, if we can’t even determine how many people are still living? According to the Johns Hopkins figures, 100,000 were killed in the bombing and subsequent fighting. The US gov’t says it can’t be determined how many died. If we don’t know how many died, how do we now say we know how many are living? Or, if they are living, who is both living and otherwise eligible (by age, etc.) ?</p>
<p>“I think the same thing will happen in Iraq and that it WILL spread to the other Arab countries.”</p>
<p>And that’s what the other Arab countries are so terribly afraid off, most notibly, our “Ally”, Saudi Arabia.</p>
<p>The flip side is that there are countries, e.g., Egypt, Pakistan, probably Saudi Arabia, where if there were free elections, governments very hostile to the US would be elected. A case of wanting democracy as long as we like the results. Or hypocrisy, take your pick.</p>
<p>I’m actually reminded me of an Arabic proverb: “He who sees the fangs of the lion bared should not think that the lion is smiling.” It actually kind of has an alliterative beauty in Arabic, which ordinarily is not my favorite language to listen to.</p>
<p>Or to speak, beyond “Faeen benti dahree?” Or so I’m told.</p>
<p>TD, Interesting point. Kind of a be careful what you wish for syndrome. I think if governments are fairly elected then the US will figure out a way to work with them even if they’re not friendly to us. I’m trying to think of a situation in which this has actually happened, but am coming up blank.</p>
<p>Momrath, to a lesser degree, look at US relationships in post-dictator Latin America. But that’s absent the whole dimension of “Islam vs. the West” that is believed in many sectors of the Arab street.</p>
<p>Btw, I meant to get back to you about your response to my supposition about Indonesia seeming to be more mellow but life overtook me for a couple of days and I lost the thread. My distilled response is: oh. </p>
<p>I’ll still say that <em>for the population as a whole,</em> Islamic fundamentalism seems less deeply rooted in Indonesia, from what I’ve read. Indonesia seems to be one of the more “melting pot” countries that I can think of and if it isn’t always smooth or happy, it’s still to a deeper degree than many other places.</p>
<p>Achat, capital cities often are more cosmopolitan and “liberal” than the countryside. The paradigm works from Moscow to D.C. and many points in between. </p>
<p>I think if one wants to get a view of Iraq that is somewhere between US-fed propaganda and Al Jazeera’s hyperbolic excesses of the Arab street, one could do far worse than to read Juan Cole.</p>
<p>TD, Indonesians definitely practice a moderate and tolerant version of Islam. Although 90% of the population is Muslim, the government is secular which has convinced me that democracy and Islam can co-exist. Unfortunately, Islamic fundamentalists (and even terrorists) are present, but their numbers are so small that a friend of mine who’s a scientist says we should count them in parts per million. The problem is that even in a general population of 230 million a few thousand trouble makers can cause a lot of heartache. </p>
<p>South America’s out of my sphere of experience. In Asia and the Middle East I maintain that advocating democratic systems will not be harmful to the US and will longterm be beneficial.</p>
<p>Momrath wrote:
Precisely – when you think of one instance, it will be the first time. It’s a little fuzzier than that, since US policy does change somewhat with different administrations … but the Bush administration’s “you’re either with us or against us” ideology is pretty clear, and it has nothing to do with democracy.</p>