Empire Notes

Iraq and Demonstration Elections

In the past year, as Vladimir Putin twice engineered elections in Chechnya of his own hand-picked candidate by pressuring other candidates to withdraw and even legally disqualifying them, Western punditry happily declared the elections farces

Similarly farcical elections engineered by the Bush administration since 9/11 have mostly gone without notice.

The upcoming January election may be different. On Friday, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani pointed out that the main U.S.-affiliated political parties (the ones that formed the Governing Council) are negotiating on a “consensus slate” of candidates for the elections.

And on Sunday, amazingly, the New York Times editorialized that such a slate could create “essentially a one-party election unless Iraq's fragmented independents manage to organize themselves into an effective new political force.” And, in an uncharacteristically direct criticism, it said, “Otherwise, Iraq's first free election may look uncomfortably like the plebiscites choreographed to produce 98 percent majorities for Saddam Hussein.”

The Times, unfortunately, neglected to fill in the history of Bush administration demonstration elections and left Afghanistan entirely out of the picture.

The June 2002 Afghan loya jirga involved roughly 1500 delegates assembled to pick the interim president of the country. Despite great pressure by U.S.-backed warlords, over 800 delegates signed a statement in support of Zahir Shah, the exiled monarch. According to delegates Omar Zakhilwal and Adeena Niazi, the United States then stepped in and “the entire loya jirga was postponed for almost two days while the former king was strong-armed into renouncing any meaningful role in the government.” Delegates were finally given a “choice” between Hamid Karzai and two entirely unknown candidates.

More recently, U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad (closely linked with Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz) has been pressuring numerous candidates to resign through some combination of coercion and bribery. In fact, 14 of the 18 candidates actually met to discuss how to deal with Khalilzad’s election tampering.

In Iraq, local officials like mayors and city council members have mostly been appointed by U.S. commanders or picked in “elections” held among small numbers of delegates selected and vetted by U.S. commanders. Scheduled elections, like those in Najaf in June 2003, were often cancelled; previously selected governments, like that in Basra, were removed.

In late June 2003, U.S. commanders had ordered a halt to all local elections because of concerns that the wrong people would win. Later, resumption of elections was approved but local commanders could choose between appointment, election by specially vetted caucuses, and actual elections; obviously, U.S. commanders were to choose the form of “election” based on the likelihood of getting the result they wanted.

At the national level, elections have, of course, been postponed repeatedly, even though voter registration, unlike in Afghanistan, would not have been a problem. Even the January deadline was forced on the United States during negotiations over Security Council Resolution 1546 on the “transfer of sovereignty.”

Numerous other ostensibly national political processes have been cancelled or manipulated as well. An assembly planned for June 2003, that would have involved mostly the U.S.-designated exile-dominated “Iraqi opposition” was cancelled by Paul Bremer. He said it was because the “opposition” was not representative of the country; a month later he chose 25 people, 16 representing exile groups, to form the Governing Council.

In August 2004, a national conference of roughly 1300 delegates met to select 81 of 100 delegates to the interim national assembly. Delegates quickly learned, however that there would be no nomination of candidates, campaigning, or elections but instead, a pre-selected slate of candidates, picked by back-room negotiations between the major U.S.-affiliated parties. Attempts to form an alternative slate fell through; at the end, the U.S.-backed slate was not even presented to the delegates for formal approval.

Even Vladimiar Putin would likely have been embarrassed. For George W. Bush, apparently, “democracy” means having elections – any elections – a definition that would make dictators from Ngo Dinh Diem to Saddam Hussein perfectly happy, as they both engineered electoral “victories.” Perhaps, for Bush the words democracy and freedom mean simply “anything the United States does” or even “anything I do.” The implications for this country ought to be as clear as the implications for Iraq. Mobilize to fight for real elections in Iraq; the freedom you save may be your own.