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description=5 posts published by Reidar Visser during May 2014;

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the, iraq, of, and, 2014, maliki, vote, in, general, election, gulf, analysis, archive, for, may, archives, categories, meta, my, latest, book, on, amazon, com, twitter, updates, subscribe, recent, posts, kurdish, dilemma, use, personal, option, 30, april, ihec, releases, data, from, special, badr, organization, internal, structure, new, state, law, parliamentary, faction, elections, result, complicated, win,

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the (327), and (66), that (60), maliki (53), iraq (43), for (41), vote (37), with (34), this (30), iraqi (30), 2014 (27), may (26), 2010 (24), from (24), has (23), elections (23), #personal (23), have (22), than (22), are (19), some (19), state (19), law (19), majority (18), more (17), votes (17), their (17), #parliamentary (16), government (16), shiite (16), his (16), though (16), would (16), these (15), kurds (15), can (15), could (14), seats (14), 2012 (14), election (13), will (13), not (13), they (13), 2006 (13), been (13), parliament (13), kurdish (13), april (13), 2008 (13), 2013 (13), which (12), also (12), baghdad (12), there (12), general (12), 2007 (12), 2009 (12), 2011 (12), parties (11), new (11), august (11), other (10), posted (10), political (10), list (10), about (10), all (10), special (10), october (10), december (10), january (10), such (9), without (9), one (9), party (9), lists (9), badr (9), candidates (9), november (9), february (9), march (9), june (9), july 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udience which should not be forgotten after they gave him more than 700 000 personal votes above all though if maliki and the kurds want to cut a separate deal it is important that both sides exercise realism in order that another erbil paper tiger and the concomitant dysfunctional government it produced can be avoided posted in iraq parliamentary elections 2014 kirkuk and disputed territories oil in iraq uncategorized 5 comments the use of the personal vote option in iraq s 30 april 2014 general election posted by reidar visser on tuesday 27 may 2014 1 37 after it was introduced in 2008 the personal vote option has become a success in the iraqi democracy contributing significantly to shaping election results in unpredictable ways often against the wishes of the party leaderships firstly it can be concluded that using the personal vote has become the norm in iraqi elections the numbers in the results clearly suggest a majority of iraqi voters indicate a candidate preference in addition to party preference when they cast their votes just to take one example from the 30 april 2014 general election out of 27 800 sadrist voters in rural muthanna more than 25 900 used the personal vote option in line with high figures reported in previous elections iraqi voters use the personal vote despite the fact that technical modalities of voting still militate against its use voters must take the trouble of remembering the name of their preferred candidate since this is not indicated on the ballot papers in analyzing data about the personal vote it is also important to be alert to its many possible uses these include pure stunts by a small number of senior politicians who feel so secure about their popularity that they deliberately place themselves far down the lists in order to demonstrate their ability to be promoted to the top by the popular vote the most spectacular example in the recent general election is hummam hammudi of isci in baghdad who deliberately put himself at the rock bottom position of the list as candidate 138 only to be gracefully lifted to a seat winning third position through the personal votes of some 10 000 devoted supporters mostly though the personal vote use affects the overall outcomes in ways that reflect real struggles between party leaderships and electorates as to which individuals are the best representatives to send to the iraqi national assembly in baghdad a good way of getting an impression of the degree of internal fighting going on already tested out with respect to the local elections last year is to tabulate the data of some main lists according to their numbers of successful candidates initially placed on winning positions followed by numbers of those promoted to winning seats from non winning positions based on the wishes of the electorate i e personal votes outnumbering those who initially held these lists positions as well as the numbers of women promoted to winning positions because of the female quota technically speaking against the preferences of the electorate though it should be noted that more than 20 female iraqi deputies this time won their seats without help from the quota thanks to strong personal votes here are some examples from the state of law results so that s 27 new mps from state of law alone that hadn t been planned by the party leadership which had placed them far down on the lists the tendency of active use of the personal vote in ways that challenge political elites is less pronounced for the muwatin bloc of ammar al hakim though not non existent after having played a role in the perhaps most spectacular use of the personal vote in 2010 when they used it to promote candidates from their own party to top positions on the iraq national alliance slate the sadrists this time showed less interest in using the personal vote in radical ways to affect the ranking of candidates set by the party leaderships on the other hand the personal vote has been used with considerable impact among other lists including the main sunni and kurdish ones here is the example of the mutahhidun bloc of usama al nujayfi the speaker of the previous parliament that s just 3 blocs and yet we have no less than 44 deputies in the iraqi parliament that probably wouldn t have been there if the party elites had had it their way the tabulations above don t tell the whole story though this is the case especially with respect to the distance travelled by some of the candidates far down on the list who went all the way to the top this time the phenomenon of big climbers was most pronounced in the big cities of baghdad basra and mosul and with some particularly spectacular examples within prime minister nuri al maliki s state of law alliance they include 3 candidates in basra who went from positions 29 30 and 31 to become seat winners and similar impressive climbs from positions 41 45 62 69 73 and 77 in baghdad also muwatin had a candidate who went from 50 to 4 in basra whereas nineveh winners for the mutahhidun list of usama al nujayfi included candidates 24 29 and 53 all in all it is the active use of the personal vote among state of law voters that this time stands out in comparative perspective vis à vis previous elections incidentally data about the personal votes may also be useful in evaluating the independence of ihec there has been some suggestions that the current commission considered more friendly to maliki than the previous one may have been under pressure to manipulate the vote but some of the painful exclusions of maliki favourites following their personal inability to garner enough personal votes tell a different story if ihec was so corrupt as its critics claim it would have been a comparatively easy job to shift internal votes to the advantage of party leadership favourites instead we have seen several state of law deputies lose their jobs due to poor electoral performance including people like ali shallah hassan al sunayd khalid al attiya yasin majid and walid al hilli indeed it can be argued that the personal vote establishes a second tier of accountability in the iraqi elections since both candidates and voters will have more specific interests to guard and will be doubly aware to attempts to manipulate this is important when the elections results are as disputed as they are in iraq hopefully after the expiry of the deadline for legal complaints against the results later this week the iraqi elections commission can soon move forward to certification thereby sealing some of these important expressions of nascent democracy even under adverse circumstances of regional tension posted in iraq parliamentary elections 2014 comments off on the use of the personal vote option in iraq s 30 april 2014 general election ihec releases data from the special vote in iraq s general election posted by reidar visser on friday 23 may 2014 20 57 in its process of reviewing complaints following the publication of the uncertified elections result the iraqi elections commission ihec has taken the unusual step of publishing data for the special vote for the iraqi security forces that took place days before the 30 april general elections in releasing this data ihec is presumably responding to a flurry of rumours regarding potential corruption and vote buying for the security forces vote which amounts to almost 1 million votes and is thus bigger than the expat vote and many governorate votes the released data has the form of percentages of the special vote for the main winning lists per governorate this can be tabulated with the percentages for the total vote as indicated in the second row for each governorate below it emerges from this tabulation that the special vote differs significantly from the general vote only in a few provinces firstly there is slightly elevated support for pm maliki in a number of shiite majority provinces including dhi qar qadisiya and babel this is mostly in the 10 15 range and as such may not be anything than an expression that this is a special segment of the electorate where affection to the commander in chief may be expected to be elevated compared to the general population a similar situation with a potential explanation relating to the kurdish peshmerga security forces relates to dahuk second there are provinces where the special vote differs significantly from the general vote this includes diyala maliki has almost doubled his percentages whereas the pro nujayfi list has its share reduced to the half nineveh where nujayfi again has only half the percentage of vote in the special votes whereas the kurdish vote is doubled sulaymaniya where puk has enormous gains compared to goran in the general vote and finally arbil where the same phenomenon albeit on a smaller scale relates to the kdp goran balance it has already been suggested that the kurdish parties applied pressure to their security forces to vote for them which could explain the dismal goran performance in the special vote the surge for maliki in the diyala special vote needs explaining and it will be interesting to see what ihec may come up with in this respect in seeking to address concerns about possible ballot stuffing in the baghdad belt ihec has also released individual tallies from the counting centres in that area the truly hard question though is to what extent these numbers will be used to affect and change the final result when it gets sent to the supreme court for certification hopefully within a few weeks posted in iraq parliamentary elections 2014 uncategorized 3 comments the badr organization and the internal structure of the new state of law parliamentary faction posted by reidar visser on thursday 22 may 2014 21 14 there have been several rumours flying around regarding the electoral success of the various subunits that form part of the state of law coalition of prime minister nuri al maliki some of these stories suggest parties outside the daawa movement may potentially pose a significant challenge to maliki s authority something that would form a contrast to the situation in 2010 when maliki did not face any major competing centres of power internally in his coalition the rumour that is easiest to verify and confirm relates to the relative success of the badr organization badr which came into existence in the 1980s as a paramilitary organization sponsored and trained by iran to fight the saddam hussein regime has won at least 19 seats within the group of parliamentary seats that can be counted as state of law in the new iraqi parliament meaning they make up more than 20 of the state of law coalition here are badr deputies in the next iraqi parliament that can be identified easily by governorate governorate no of badr deputies names basra 2 ahmad al khafaji hassan al rashid maysan dhi qar 2 razzaq ujaymi amal attiya al nasiri muthanna 1 ali lafta al murshidi qadisiyya 2 muhammad al shaybawi suham al musawi babel 2 razzaq al haydari manal al muslimawi najaf 1 muhammad abbas al musawi karbala wasit 1 qasim al zuhayri baghdad 5 abd al karim yunis muhammad naji abd al hussein al azayrjawi hassan al saadi muhammad al ghaban diyala 2 hadi al ameri mina saleh al umayri nineveh 1 hunayn al qaddo some of the individual results call for special comment there are a few prominent vote getters in terms of personal votes including hadi al ameri with 20 000 in diyala though this is really nothing in comparative national perspective there are some significant climbers such as hassan al saadi in baghdad who went from an initial 35th place to a seat winning 21st position although on the whole badr winners were mostly placed high on the list by the state of law leadership in the first place and the newly declared badr affiliation of the representative of the shabak minority hunayn al qaddo can now be confirmed qaddo who is emphatically not a militiaman has previously wavered between the hakim and maliki factions similar stories about the alleged surges of other competitors to maliki inside the state of law list have not been possible to confirm as easily materials on candidates for the independents bloc of deputy premier hussein al shahristani and the tanzim al iraq faction of the daawa is less easily available an initial superficial count indicated less than a dozen mps for each of these factions including some setbacks for prominent figures like khalid al attiya though this may be an underestimate of course historically badr has been the iraqi shiite faction closest to iran constituting the premier example of an organization formed for the single purpose of exercising iranian leadership over iraqi shiites their strong ties to iran could prove particularly important if the question of resurrecting the pan shiite national alliance for purposes of government formation once more moves to the foreground of iraqi politics posted in iraq parliamentary elections 2014 uia dynamics uncategorized comments off on the badr organization and the internal structure of the new state of law parliamentary faction the iraq elections result maliki s complicated win posted by reidar visser on monday 19 may 2014 21 23 the uncertified result of iraq s parliamentary elections released by the election commission today cannot be described as anything other than a victory for the incumbent prime minister nuri al maliki compared with 2010 maliki increased his share of seats in the iraqi parliament from 89 to 94 this quite despite the fact that maliki experienced numerous defections from his list before the elections and therefore fielded a much slimmer electoral coalition than in 2010 his success can hardly be translated as anything other than an indication of his continued popularity among voters despite growing unease about his rule among political opponents asterisk indicating affiliated list not only did maliki manage to increase the size of his parliamentary contingent his political enemies also look far more fragmented than before in the shiite camp the sadrist saw their bloc reduced by about a quarter of its previous size whereas isci despite making something of a comeback was unable to garner more than 30 seats among the sunnis parliament speaker nujayfi failed to emerge as the community leader he had been dreaming of with shiite secularist ayyad allawi continuing to appeal to secularists of sunni and shiite backgrounds alike even the kurds have seen a greater degree of formal fragmentation than before though a theoretical combined bloc strength of more than 60 seats is possible if they stay united and win over minority representatives as in the past all in all the group of parties that were on the verge of succeeding with a vote of no confidence against maliki in 2012 now look weaker the question now however is what maliki can do with this impressive victory prior to the elections a main debate was whether the next iraqi government should be a power sharing or a majority one maliki has been vocal in his expression for a smaller majority g...