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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
IRAQ: Confirmation of voting register underway
BAGHDAD, 4 November 2004 (IRIN) - The process of registering voters for Iraq's January elections is going smoothly, according to local officials, despite ongoing violence in the country and threats.
Names registered under the monthly food ration distribution have been used to make up the electoral register. Details of those who went to collect their rations as of 1 November were being double checked to ensure the register is correct and up to date.
Iraqis were asked to take documents with them to the food collection point for verification so that special identity cards could be issued to them for the day of the election so they can cast their vote. It will take around six weeks to complete the registration process of voters and political parties, officials say.
More than 550 registration centres have been set up throughout the country near where people receive their monthly food rations. Those places will be protected by security offered by the Ministry of Interior and US troops to guarantee the safety of people casting votes, according to a spokesman for the Iraqi Independent Electoral Commission, Farid Ayar.
"We are not worried about security. Everything is going as we have been planning," Ayar told IRIN in Baghdad, noting that work would continue despite threats.
The resistance group linked to Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian Islamist who is at the top of the list of the most wanted men in Iraq, has sent letters to election organisers warning them to stop their work or face death.
A small team of 35 electoral experts from the United Nations is helping to organise and oversee the ballot to guarantee there is no malpractice during vote counting.
According to UN officials they are also holding discussions with the Coalition forces to provide a unit to protect the perimeter of UN facilities and staff travelling outside the heavily guarded Green Zone in Baghdad.
Iraq has been pressing for more UN experts to help prepare for the elections, but the world body has been unable to respond due to insecurity in the country and by the lack of offers to provide troops for a special protection force, especially after the August 2003 bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad in which 22 people were killed including top UN envoy to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello.
Although the United Nations wanted to distance itself from depending on US and other Coalition troops, it has had no choice but to rely on them to protect the small number of UN staff now in Baghdad, officials said. In a press conference at UN headquarters in New York this week, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Management, Catherine Bertini, said that the UN was working diligently to look into the entire security system for those who will be involved in the elections process.
Ayar from the Iraqi election commission added that the UN was doing a good job of informing people of how the elections would take place and how they could be involved.
But on the streets of the capital there remained scepticism over the whole process. "They are talking about elections and until now I have not seen any candidate offering something to the Iraqis in their speeches, it is wrong. I cannot see the democracy in all that," Zeid Abbas, 46, a shop keeper in the Adamyia sector of Baghdad, told IRIN.
"I want a strong candidate, Iraqis are tired of having incompetent people in the government that are only worried about their security," Mariam Khalid, 36, a university professor, told IRIN.
Meanwhile, Iraq's largest group of Sunni Muslim clerics ordered their followers to boycott January's parliamentary elections if US forces didn't break off their military campaign in the city of Fallujah, which is now ringed by US Marines and suffers from daily aerial bombardment in attempts to flush out insurgents.
Theme(s): (IRIN) Conflict, (IRIN) Governance
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This material comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. All materials copyright © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2004
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