Iraqi Voters Approve Constitution

Tuesday, 25 October, 2005

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Daud Salman

Iraq’s electoral commission announced this week that voters had overwhelmingly approved a new constitution that many Sunni Arabs strongly opposed.

The Independent Electoral Commission in Iraq said on October 25 that 79 per cent of voters approved the constitution in the referendum held on October 15. Voter turnout was 63 per cent.

The commission did not announce the results for 10 days so as to check reports of voting irregularities - details of which it will release later this week. The commission, along with the United Nations, recounted votes in those provinces that registered extraordinarily high approval rates, and in some Sunni Arab provinces where some leaders said they suspected voter fraud.

Many Sunni Arab leaders who believed the constitution marginalised Sunnis hoped that they would be able to muster enough no votes to veto the constitution and draft a new document from scratch. Two-thirds of the voters in three out of the country’s 18 provinces would have needed to vote against the constitution for such a veto.

Two Sunni Arab provinces, Salahaddin and Anbar, both met that requirement. But according to official figures, voters in two other provinces with substantial Sunni populations, Diyala and Ninewa, did not even come close to rejecting the charter by two-thirds.

Despite the official declaration, some remained sceptical.

Emad Mansoor, a 23-year-old Baghdad University student, said the recounts “raised suspicions” that there had been fraud.

“Whether [the constitution] is approved or rejected, we want it done without forgery or fraud," he said.

As soon as the results were announced, a period of relative calm in the Sunni city of Ramadi was shattered when huge explosions were heard in the centre of town as clashes continued between insurgents and United States forces. Ramadi is the capital of Anbar province, where 97 per cent of voters rejected the constitution.

“The results that were announced don’t mean anything to us,” said Azmi Shawkat, an assistant professor in the college of education at Anbar university. “This is a photocopied constitution and it doesn’t change anything for Iraq’s situation.”

In the southern, mainly Shia city of Basra, 22-year-old Mohammed Rahim said the endorsement of the constitution showed “that the Shia and the Kurds are the majority in Iraq and all should respect their opinions in this country.”

In al-Adhamiyyah, a majority Sunni Arab neighbourhood in Baghdad that has calmly waited for the results, teashops buzzed with the news that the constitution had passed.

"We expected the constitution to be defeated,” said Waleed al-Adhami, a 48-year-old carpenter. “This is a surprise."

In al-Hurriyyah, a mostly Shia neighbourhood in the capital, residents took to the streets, chanting "No to terror! Yes, yes to the constitution! Yes, yes to the Marjiyah!", the latter a reference to the Shia clerical leadership.

“This was the first referendum for a constitution that aimed to build an institutional state that avoids totalitarian or unilateral power,” said Farid Ayar, spokesman for the electoral commission. “The constitutional referendum, regardless of whether votes were cast for or against, was a modern step.”

The commission waited until October 25 to release the official results of four provinces including Basra, Erbil and Babil, where voters overwhelmingly approved the constitution. In the predominantly Shia city of Basra, 97 per cent approved the constitution; in Erbil, 99 per cent voted in favour; and in Babil, also a Shia stronghold, 95 per cent approved the charter.

Diyala approved the charter by 52 per cent, the commission reported. In Ninewa, a primarily Sunni Arab province, 45 per cent cast their ballots in favour of the constitution. Officials recounted votes in that province over fraud concerns.

Recount results in the provinces proved identical to the original figures, reported Izzadin al-Muhammadi, an electoral commission official in Baghdad.

Commission officials said they received 125 complaints and appeals for investigations, including 80 in the city of Kirkuk, fifteen in Mosul in Ninewa province, six in Diyala and five in Basra.

Most of the complaints dealt with violations such as missing names on voter registration lists and polling centres opening late, said Abdul-Hussein al-Hindawi, a commission member.

Basil Abdul-Wahab al-Azawi, chief of the civil society organisations commission in Baghdad, worked as a monitor during the referendum. He said most of the violations he observed involved the head of a family voting on behalf of all his household.

Mishaan al-Jabouri, a national assembly representative and leader of the Home Party, registered voter fraud complaints for Ninewa and Diyala, another Sunni Arab province that rejected the constitution. He claimed that 200,000 additional Kurdish voters had registered in both governorates, tipping the scale in favour of constitution-supporters.

"If there is fraud [regarding] the constitution in Ninewa, Diyala or Kirkuk, it will be a dangerous precedent that could be included in Iraq’s phoney democracy tour," said Mustafa al-Dulaimi, a 40-year-old preparatory school teacher in Baghdad.

But Farhad Majeed al-Talabani, director of Kirkuk's electoral commission, said, "No electoral process in the world, not just Iraq, can be free of violations and fraud. Thus, it should not be considered a 100 per cent clean process."

Only one per cent of voters in the three Kurdish provinces of Dahuk, Sulaimaniyah and Erbil rejected the charter.

In Sulaimaniyah, many said they were glad the constitution was officially approved, even as car bombs shook this generally stable city just hours before the results were announced.

"I'd anticipated that the majority of the Iraqi people would vote for the constitution, and I'm happy that it passed,” said Chopi Mahmood, a university student in Sulaimaniyah. “I hope we will be able to take a step towards stability."

Mohammed Thamer, a retired man, said, “What will happen after the constitution passes? Today there were many explosions, but I’m still optimistic about the future.”

Daud Salman and Zeinab Naji are IWPR trainee journalists in Baghdad.With additional reporting from IWPR trainees Samah Samad in Kirkuk; Rebaz Mahmood in Sulaimaniyah; Yasin al-Dilaimi in Ramadi; Safaa Mansoor in Basra; and Nasir Kadhim in Baghdad.