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Reports from Iraq

15 comments on Reports from Iraq

Reports from Iraq

: Zeyad is back with two very informative posts at Healing Iraq. Zeyad’s reporting comes in shades of gray: not the white of Iraq The Model or the black of Riverbend. As much as I love and respect the ITM guys for their courageous stand in favor of a free future and as glad as I am that we can hear every perspective, including Riverbend’s angry view, it is Zeyad who provides sophisticated, balanced, yet personal and human reporting from Iraq. From his first post, he was glad to be free but also bluntly realistic about the hardships and fears he and his family are living under.

In the first post today, Zeyad gives us an incredibly detailed and eduational post about the Iraq election process, more than I’ve read anywhere else. He explains what all the coalitions and lists are and how people will vote for lists but only the top candidates from successful parties will get into National Assembly based on their vote total. Zeyad does a wonderful job explaining it, but it’s quite confusing:

A registered voter will cast his vote for ONE of the 93 lists. The National Assembly will consist of 275 members. A candidate would need (total number of voters/275) votes to get a seat in the assembly. For example, if 10 million people vote, divide 10,000,000 by 275 and you get 36,363 votes required for a candidate to be on the assembly (actually it’s 36363.6 votes but I’m not quite sure how they are going to deal with fractional numbers).

So, for a list that gets 11% of the votes (1,100,000 votes), they are allocated 11% of the 275 seats which is [275/11=]25 members. If that particular list has 200 candidates, only the top 25 members on the list get the seats. Therefore it’s easy to conclude that the higher a candidate’s name is on the list, the more likely they would get a seat. I hope I haven’t confused anyone!

I should add that the majority of Iraqi voters are in fact confused and unfamiliar with these details and I have a feeling that the major players intend to keep it this way. The IEC has promised to distribute pamphlets and handbills explaining the above process in simple terms to Iraqi voters.

Nonetheless

Recent polls by the IEC indicate that some 80% of eligible voters (all Iraqis over 18 who can prove their Iraqi identity) in the country have registered.

Take that, those of you who think that there are people on this earth who aren’t ready for democracy. Take that along with the incredible turnout in Afghanstan. I will bet that even with the fear of dying at the polls, more Iraqis will show up to vote than at too many American elections. We take our freedom for granted. That, and much more:

In his second long post of the day, Zeyad catalogues the daily difficulties of life in Baghad: still no electricity for hours and even days at a time (why haven’t we yet received a decent explanation for this>), continuing shortages of fuel in an oil-rich land, and phones that just don’t work. Clearly, it is hard and dangerous to get the infrastructure built with terrorism at any corner, but as in any electorate, it is the daily issues of life that will affect the outcome of an election.

15 responses to “Reports from Iraq”

  1. jonny goldstein Avatar
    jonny goldstein

    Interesting. They are using the same system of proportional representation as Israel!

  2. ahmed Avatar
    ahmed

    Your link to Iraq the model leads to Healing Iraq.

  3. Quentin Avatar
    Quentin

    Johnny Goldstein,
    The Iraqis have adopted the system of proportional representation which is common in mainland Europe. Israel adopted the system from mainland Europe too. The Iraqi choice has nothing directly to do with Israel.

  4. David M. McClory Avatar
    David M. McClory

    I linked to Riverbend, and have never read anything so miserable and morbid.
    This is partly a function of the indifference to ordinary Iraqis’ security that the “minimum-troops-necessary” policy of Iraq’s liberators.
    Whether the US will increase its troop numbers by even more then the 12,000 recently annonced, or whenever Iraqi conscripts will eventually fill in the breach, when one looks to the early development of Canada and the United States, security began as a local concern.
    Citizens got these institutions together. Elements within Riverbend’s neck of the woods that might have looked after their neighbors and community are busy fighting for Ba’thism and the nihilist end of Muslim Facsism.
    This is partly a choice of priorities, sad to say. Electricity and gasoline will be scarce if supplies are attacked and prices are controlled.
    Who is offering the quickest way for things to be normal? Zarqawi? al-Duri?
    Some pretend that they are.

  5. Jeff Jarvis Avatar
    Jeff Jarvis

    Ahmed: Thanks. Fixed.

  6. Yehudit Avatar
    Yehudit

    “Interesting. They are using the same system of proportional representation as Israel!”
    Um, that’s not a good idea . . . .
    on the other hand, that means they’ll cycle through umpteen governments every year and therefore evolve faster. . . .

  7. Quentin Avatar
    Quentin

    Yehudit,
    No, it’s a great idea. Much more democratic than the U.S. system.

  8. jonny goldstein Avatar
    jonny goldstein

    Like any system, the proportional representation one has pros and cons. I’m not an expert on European systems, but I lived in Israel for several years and have a decent grasp of that system. There, it has worked out that small parties, often religious ones, hold the balance of power to make or break coalitions, which leads to them getting all kinds of government pork. Another interesting thing is that representatives aren’t answerable to a geographic district. I would argue that a strength of U.S. politics is that representatives have an incentive to listen to constituants. If I go to my representatives’ office in D.C., they have some incentive to listen to me, whereas if they were part of some national slate of candidates, they probably couldn’t care less about what I thought. On the other hand a good thing about proportional representation is that small parties get a voice, unlike in the United States where third parties are very unlikely to overcome the entrenched advantage of the two major parties. No system is perfect. It will be interesting to see how it plays out in Iraq.

  9. Diane Avatar
    Diane

    Maybe I missed it but Zeyad doesn’t seem to have mentioned what the threshold is, that is, what level the slate must pass to be counted in the National Assembly. In Israel it’s a paltry 1.5% which contributes to the instability Yehudit referred to. I’ve looked around the ‘net for the threshold but can’t find it.
    The difference between the Israeli system and the Iraqi is that in the latter constituents will cast votes for slates, which are agglomerations of parties. (And weird agglomerations they are: in one, you find the SCIRI and Chalabi’s INC.)
    In Israel you vote for parties (some of which are coalitions of smaller parties), which then can be included in the formation of a gov’t–but only if they succeed in breaching the threshold.
    In any case going this route appears to be a victory of the Islamists, according to Michael Rubin of the AEI. (Link: http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php?t=6056)
    Rubin is hardly a critic of the war, so the development strikes me as not a positive one. I cannot see how this will result in anything other than a Shi’a dominated government, as Rubin points out. Shi’a dominated means Sistani ultimately wields power, if we are lucky, al Sadr or his ilk if we are not. But even Sistani is a radical Islamist.
    In the long run it will facilitate the creation of an anti-American, but legitimate, government. Or civil war.
    Take your pick. Neither is a favorable outcome for American interests.

  10. Quentin Avatar
    Quentin

    Diane,
    No, of course not. But such an outcome was predicted even before the invasion of Iraq began. What else could anyone expect with a roughly 60% Shi’a population?

  11. Diane Avatar
    Diane

    Then the system needed to be designed with checks and balances. Montana has a population of 900K; it has two senators as does California w/a population of 36M. The genius of the US system is checks and balances. (Which didn’t prevent a civil war, but anyway….) We could have created a system with some checks and balances at the very outset of the occupation.
    (Link: http://www.areaconnect.com/population.htm?s=MT, substitute CA for California population)

  12. Richard Aubreyr Avatar
    Richard Aubreyr

    Part of the reason, it’s reported, for the shortages of electricity in Baghdad is that the electric infrastructure pre-war was sufficient to power Baghdad 24-7, and the rest of the country from time to time. Now it’s spread out more evenly, but nobody gets the Baghdad treatment.
    Also, with the new prosperity, more people have more applicances drawing more juice which, I understand is free and therefore beyond rational decisions of use and not use.
    Ditto gas–more cars.
    Also sabotage by the leftists’ buddies.

  13. Richard Aubreyr Avatar
    Richard Aubreyr

    Part of the reason, it’s reported, for the shortages of electricity in Baghdad is that the electric infrastructure pre-war was sufficient to power Baghdad 24-7, and the rest of the country from time to time. Now it’s spread out more evenly, but nobody gets the Baghdad treatment.
    Also, with the new prosperity, more people have more applicances drawing more juice which, I understand is free and therefore beyond rational decisions of use and not use.
    Ditto gas–more cars.
    Also sabotage by the leftists’ buddies.

  14. Karl Avatar
    Karl

    Proportional representation: Much more democratic, worked wonders for the Weimar Republic.
    Having taken the easy shot, I would say that PR is neither better nor worse than the U.S. system per se — just different. In the case of Iraq, it may help to ensure that Sunnis have a place at the table, even if warfare in the triangle hinders their voting in this first election.

  15. Swopa Avatar
    Swopa

    Take that, those of you who think that there are people on this earth who aren’t ready for democracy.
    I take it you mean Messrs. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bremer et al. when you say this?
    You’ve probably flushed this down your personal memory hole, but the U.S. didn’t want elections — we had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into allowing them.
    Only when Ayatollah Sistani backed up his months of demands by putting upward of 100,000 demonstrators into the streets of Baghdad did we back down.
    Our government’s plan was to hand power ASAP to unelected exiles like Ahmad Chalabi, who would write a constitution and lock in all sorts of permanent agreements before the riff-raff of Iraq would be deemed “ready for democracy.”