Iran Review

Mohammad Khajouei
M.A. in Middle East Studies

The new election law of Iraq had been just vetoed by the Iraqi vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, when a new challenge further complicated the upcoming parliamentary elections in the country which has been scheduled for March: disqualification of 500 candidates.

The committee responsible for disqualification of those candidates has cited their membership in or cooperation with the now disbanded Baath Party, which was headed by the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, as the main reason behind the exclusion. The news was a new shock to an already turbulent Iraq and elicited many positive and negative reactions.

Disqualification of those people can act like Damocles sword. On the one hand, it can prevent growth of people and political currents which have been at the service of the former dictator and thus, prevent a major threat to the nascent democracy in Iraq.

On the other hand, disqualification of the candidates, most of them Sunnis, can lead to repetition of what happened in past elections in 2005. In that year, the first free elections following the fall of Saddam Hussein was marked with ethnic and religious hostilities and skirmishes causing Sunni Arabs to boycott the election.

Marginalization of Sunni Arabs in Iraq has prompted some of them to join terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda and has greatly increased ethnic and religious violence in most parts of the country. Therefore, this new challenge can be a potential threat to national reconciliation and increased political and social participation in Iraq.

The United States is also concerned about the situation in Iraq. Therefore, Joe Biden was in Iraq on Saturday though he noted that he was not there to solve the problem because he believed that it was related to internal affairs of Iraq and should be solved by them. However, all evidence, including statements of the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, indicated that Biden was there with a solution to the problem of disqualification of most parliamentary candidates.

They say that Obama’s vice president also warned the government to allow for the election to be held in the freest manner. He clearly noted that marginalizing those groups should be postponed until after the elections and it should be done through diplomatic means.

It seems that the decision by the committee to exclude some candidates will damage national reconciliation and affect the schedule that the United States has offered for its troop pullout. Any possible political and security challenge will put a heavy burden on the frail shoulders of the Iraqi government.

Just a few hours after Biden visited Iraq, heads of the three Iraqi powers (executive, legislature and judiciary) issued a statement announcing that a new committee will be formed to vet the candidates and, as a first step, 54 disqualified candidates were taken out of the black list.

Evidence shows that senior Iraqi officials are trying to come up with an intermediate solution which will both purge Baath elements from the government, and not negatively affect political participation by Sunni Arabs. It seems that this is the sole solution which can help Iraq weather the current crisis.