El WSWS diu:
The Los Angeles Times wrote on Monday that the turnout had failed "to meet expectations". A British-based academic on Iraqi politics, Toby Dodge, told Reuters: "The lower turnout I think would reflect cynicism but also world-weariness with the vote. You had that huge tide of expectation in 2005... and that crashed against the reality of a fairly incompetent ruling elite."La màxima motivació per votar és "parar els kurds":
Even a legislator of Maliki's Da'wa Party, Ali al-Adeeb, commented to McClatchy Newspapers: "There was a mood of apathy before the elections. Many asked themselves—what is the good, why should we vote and for what?"
The barely mentioned reality is that Iraq has been devastated and much of its population of 26 million reduced to utter misery. Over 1.2 million have been killed, a similar number are disabled with horrific injuries and some 4 million are refugees in neighbouring countries or classified as "internally displaced persons". A vast amount of personal property has been destroyed or damaged.
Even before the impact of the global recession, over 50 percent of the workforce was unemployed or underemployed. People in Iraq's cities cannot rely on the provision of basic services such as health care, electricity, trash collection, a functioning sewerage system and even clean water—services that are essential to civilised life.
Discontent and unrest is only restrained by exhaustion after years of death and destruction, and the repressive role of about 140,000 American troops and 500,000 soldiers, police and militiamen loyal to the various factions within the pro-US Iraqi government. Moreover, a political perspective is lacking as to how to end US domination. Millions of people are preoccupied with rebuilding their shattered lives and have no confidence in any of the 100 or so parties contesting the election.
Some of the lowest voter turnouts were recorded in the provinces where the Shiite movement led by cleric Moqtada al-Sadr once had a broad following among the working class due to its populist denunciations of the occupation and professed concern for the plight of the poor. Over the past three years, support for the Sadrists has been largely shattered by a combination of US and Iraqi government repression and the incorporation of most of its leadership into the US-established state. Moqtada al-Sadr eventually left the country some time in 2007 to undertake religious studies in Iran.
The Sadrists did not stand any candidates in the elections under their own banner. From his self-imposed exile, Sadr called on Iraqis to vote for the candidates of two independent Shiite lists. Instead, voters stayed away in large numbers.
In Basra and Maysan provinces, where Maliki ordered major military operations in early 2008 against Sadrist-influenced Shiite militiamen, the turnout was 48 and 46 percent respectively. In Baghdad, where one third of the population lives in the densely populated and poverty-stricken former Sadrist stronghold of Sadr City that was besieged by US troops last year, just 40 percent voted—half as many as in the December 2005 election.
The highest turnouts occurred in provinces with large Sunni Arab populations: Salah Ad Din (65 percent), Nineveh (60 percent) and Diyala (57 percent). In part, Sunni voters appear to have responded to a communal campaign to curb the influence of Kurdish nationalist parties. These parties already control the Kurdish autonomous region (KRG) in Iraq's north and aim to annex other northern areas, such as districts of Nineveh and the entire oil-rich province of Tamim and its capital Kirkuk.
Both Sunni and ethnic Turkomen parties openly campaigned on a program of stopping "Kurdish expansion". Whatever electoral gains they made will be presented as evidence that non-Kurds do not want to be part of a de-facto Kurdish state.
The ethnic tensions over the status of Kirkuk are in essence a conflict over which faction of the Iraqi elite will control the northern oilfields. The danger of open violence was considered so great that no vote was held for the provincial government in Tamim. A resolution, however, cannot be delayed indefinitely and could trigger civil war between the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdish region.
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