2010 Iraqi parliamentary election

Iraqi parliamentary election, 2010

7 March 2010
All 325 seats to the Council of Representatives of Iraq
File:38293-ammar hakim.jpg Leader Nouri al-Maliki Ammar al-Hakim Party State of Law NIA Last election - 128
Incumbent Prime Minister of Iraq Nouri al-Maliki al Dawa

A parliamentary election is planned in Iraq on 7 March 2010. The Iraqi Vice President vetoed the election law on 18 November, delaying the original date of January 21.

The election will decide the 325 members of the Council of Representatives of Iraq who will then elect the Prime Minister of Iraq and the President of Iraq. The election is planned for the same day as a referendum on the presence of US troops.

The necessary election law was only passed on November 8, and the UN Mission in Iraq, which is helping with the elections, estimates that it needs 90 days to plan for the election. The electoral commission has asked for a delay from the original date of 15 January.

Electoral system

Prior to the election, the Supreme Court in Iraq ruled that the existing electoral rule was unconstitutional. The parliament therefore set about drafting a new electoral law.

The Iraqi cabinet approved a draft elections law in September 2009. However, in took two months and ten delays for the law to pass in the Council of Representatives. The main areas of dispute concerned the "open list" electoral system and the voters roll in Kirkuk Governorate, which Arab and Turkmen parties alleged had been manipulated by the Kurdish run provincial government.

Example open list ballot paper from the Netherlands with parties across the top and individuals listed down the page

Open lists

UNAMI advised the electoral system was changed to allow people to vote for individuals as well as party lists under the open list form of proportional representation. The last national elections had used a closed list system, but the Iraqi governorate elections of 2009 had used open lists. The move was initially opposed by parliamentarians from ISCI, who feared open lists would favour Maliki. The seniormost Iraqi Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, warned that failure to adopt the open list system would have "negative impacts on the democratic process" and would reduce turnout and aides said he may call for a boycott of the polls if closed lists were used again. Over 1,000 people demonstrated against closed lists throughout the country. In the end, all parties except for the Kurdistani Alliance agreed to support open lists which was adopted.

Kirkuk governorate

Location of Kirkuk Governorate (blue) with Iraqi Kurdistan shown in red

In Kirkuk Governorate, it was proposed to use to old 2004 electoral rolls. However, Kurds protested about this, given the large number of Kurdish people who had settled there since then. UNAMI then proposed that Kirkuk be divided into two or more ethnic constituencies, with the Kurdish constituency given an automatic quota of 50% plus one. When put to parliament, this proposal was blocked by Arab MPs, causing a deadlock. The issue was referred to the Political Council for National Security, which comprises the President, Prime Minister and party leaders. The Council proposed to combine the electoral rolls from 2004 and 2009, but when this was put to parliament, it was blocked by Kurds. UNAMI then proposed using the 2009 records but revisiting for future elections. When put to a vote the Kurdish MPs walked out, leaving the parliament without a quorum. The final law said that the results in Kirkuk - and other governorates where the rolls were deemed "dubious" - would be provisional, subject to review within the first year by a committee formed out of the electoral commission, parliament, government and UNAMI, which could cancel fraudulent ballots. The law was passed by a vote of 141 to 54, with 80 members absent.

Seat allocation

The law increased the size of the Council from 275 to 325 members - equal to one seat per 100,000 voters, as specified in the Constitution of Iraq. As with the December 2005 election, seats will be allocated by governorate with additional "compensatory" seats allocated to those parties whose national share of the vote isn't reflected in the seats won at the governorate level. The votes of Iraqis living abroad would originally have been counted in the compensatory seats, which were reduced from 45 seats to 16 and eight of these 16 seats were allocated to specific national minorities - five for Iraqi Christians and one each for Yazidis, Shabak and Mandaeans.

Iraqi Vice-President Tariq al-Hashimi said the small number of compensatory seats discriminated against the estimated 2 million Iraqi refugees, many of whom are Sunni Arabs like al-Hashimi. He demanded that the number of compensatory seats be increased to 15% (48) and went on national television to say he would veto the law if it weren't amended. Sunni Arab parliamentarian Saleh al-Mutlaq said 30 seats should be allocated to Iraqis abroad to reflect their numbers. President Jalal Talabani also supported the increase to 15%, after receiving a letter from Kurdish regional MPs saying their allies from minority groups would be unfairly treated. In the event President Talabani and Vice-President Adel Abdul Mahdi signed the law despite their concerns, but Hashimi followed through his threat and vetoed it.

Parliament asked the Supreme Federal Court for advice, and it issued a statement saying that "all Iraqis, whether they live in the country or outside its borders, should be represented in the parliament." There was some confusion over this statement with the head of the legal affairs committee interpreted this as annulling the veto. However, Ayad al-Samarrai, the parliamentary speaker said the statement was not binding on parliament because it was advice rather a ruling in response to a complaint. Parliament therefore met to consider the law again. Hundreds of supporters of the Prime Minister held demonstrations against the veto in Najaf, Basra and Wasit.

The President of Iraqi Kurdistan, Massoud Barzani, then threatened to boycott the election if the representation of the three provinces in Kurdistan wasn't increased. The provinces had only gained three of the 77 additional seats.

When the Iraqi Parliament met again they amended the law to provide that Iraqis abroad would vote in the governorate they lived before they left the country. The number of seats per governorate was then changed to increase all governorates by a fixed 2.8% over the 2005 population figures - meaning Kurdish areas got more seats but Sunni Arab areas got fewer. Analysts said Hashemi had "played poker and lost" and an MP from a rival Sunni Arab party said he should go and apologise to the governorates that had lost out. Tribal leaders in the Sunni Arab city of Tikrit threatened to call for a poll boycott if the amended law went through and Hashemi said he would veto again.

Internally displaced people will only be allowed to vote where their ration card was issued, a provision that Taha Daraa, MP for the United Iraqi Alliance in Diyala, said discriminated against them and was unconstitutional. He called on the constitutional court to strike down the provision.

Head of the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC), Faraj Al Haydari, announced that curfew will be imposed and airports closed on the day of elections. The head of the IHEC electoral directorate, Haydar Al Abboudi, said he hoped to announce the results of elections three days later.

Coalitions

File:Iraqi legislative election of Dec 2005 with logos.png

Previous election result

The list that won the most seats in the previous election was the United Iraqi Alliance, made up primarily of religious Shi'ite parties, who won 128 out of 275 seats. However, this list split into two lists for this election: the State of Law Coalition of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the National Iraqi Alliance, which included most of the other parties.

The National Iraqi Alliance was first mooted in August 2009 made up of the principal remaining components of the Alliance: SIIC, the Badr Organization, the Sadrist Movement, the National Reform Trend, and the Islamic Dawa Party - Iraq Organisation. SIIC was reported to have offered to split the coalition's seats four ways - 25% to SIIC and Badr, 25% to the Sadrists, 25% to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Islamic Dawa Party and 25% to others and independents. However, Maliki wanted half the seats - reflecting the results of the Iraqi governorate elections of 2009 won by Maliki's State of Law Coalition - and a guarantee of another term for Maliki. He also wanted Sunni Arab parties like the Awakening movements to be included as primary members of the coalition to form what his spokesman termed "a truly national alliance". In September the coalition was formally announced without the Islamic Dawa Party. Other members of the coalition include the Basra-based Islamic Virtue Party, which had left the United Iraqi Alliance soon after the December 2005 election and former Oil Minister Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress.

Maliki was reported to have gained the support of Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the Sunni Arab former speaker of the Council of Representatives. However, Ali Larijani, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, went to Baghdad to persuade Iraqi Shia’s to stick together in a united front rather than form non-sectarian alliances with Sunni Arabs or Kurds, most of whom are Sunni too. According to an Iraqi confidant of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki “The Iranian pressed us pretty hard.”

The Kurdistani Alliance called for a single pan-Kurdish list, including the Islamist parties and the opposition Movement for Change, which had gained a quarter of the seats in the Iraqi Kurdistan legislative election of 2009. However, the Movement for Change said the two main Kurdistani Alliance parties - the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan of President of Iraq Jalal Talabani and the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iraq of Iraqi Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani - tended to "monopolize" power, and competing separately would "secure their own powers" in Baghdad. The Kurdistan Islamic Union also said it would compete separately, as it had in December 2005, and rejected a pan-Islamist coalition with the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Islamic Group.

The main Sunni Arab party, the Iraqi Islamic Party, was hit by high profile defections including Vice-President Tariq al-Hashimi, who launched a new party called the Renewal List. Another parliamentarian, Omar Abdul Sattar, left the party in early 2009 saying it had "failed to achieve its aims". Hashimi's party formed a coalition called the Iraqi National Movement with the Iraqi National List of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and the neo-Baathist Iraqi National Dialogue Front led by Saleh al-Mutlak.

Ahmed Abu Risha, the head of the Awakening movement party that won the most seats in the Al Anbar governorate election, 2009, formed a coalition with Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani and Ahmed Abdul Ghafour al-Samarrai of the Sunni Endowment called "Iraq's Unity". Abu Risha had previously held talks with Maliki on joining the State of Law Coalition.

Seat Allocations

The council agreed to increase the number of seats from 275 to 325. With this, the number of seats allocated to each governorate were changed from 2005 elections. Source and

Governorate	Coalition	Seats 2009	Seats 2005	In/de-creased by	Percentage in/de-crease
Baghdad Governorate
	Total	68	59	9	15.3 %
Salah ad Din Governorate
	Total	12	8	4	50.0 %
Diyala Governorate
	Total	13	10	3	30.0 %
Wasit Governorate
	Total	11	8	3	37.5 %
Maysan Governorate
	Total	10	7	3	42.9 %
Basra Governorate
	Total	24	16	8	50.0 %
Dhi Qar Governorate
	Total	18	12	6	50.0 %
Al Muthanna Governorate
	Total	7	5	2	40.0 %
Al-Qādisiyyah Governorate
	Total	11	8	3	37.5 %
Babil Governorate
	Total	16	11	5	45.5 %
Karbala Governorate
	Total	10	6	4	66.7 %
Najaf Governorate
	Total	12	8	4	50.0 %
Al Anbar Governorate
	Total	14	9	5	55.6 %
Ninawa Governorate
	Total	31	19	12	63.2 %
Duhok Governorate
	Total	10	7	3	42.9 %
Erbil Governorate
	Total	14	13	1	07.7 %
Kirkuk Governorate
	Total	12	9	3	33.3 %
As Sulaymaniyah Governorate
	Total	17	15	2	13.3 %
Compensatory seats
	Total	7	45	-38	-15.6 %
Minorities
	Total	8	0	8	100 %
Total		325	275	50	18.2 %

New government

The Al-Maliki government was the first government formed under the Constitution of Iraq that was approved in 2005. As a transitional measure, both the President and Prime Minister had two deputies to maintain harmony among Shiite Arabs, Sunni Arabs and Kurds. The President and his two Vice Presidents formed the Presidency Council of Iraq which acted unanimously. However, after the election the President can use his powers alone, and there will be only one Vice-President and Deputy Prime Minister. In addition, as a transitional measure the Presidency Council had to be elected with a two thirds majority; under the permanent measures, a simple majority is sufficient to elect the President after the first round.