Open — closed lists and the election law

Strange, Sis­tani sup­ports the “open-list” sys­tem (Shi­ite par­ties claim), while in 2005 elec­tion he blessed the “closed-list” that brought the cur­rent UIA to the government.

Recently, he even rejects the mixed-list (again claims):

Sis­tani and the supreme cler­ics dis­ap­proved the adop­tion of a mixed (open-closed lists) sys­tem, because it causes con­fu­sion in the the results — Al-Watan.

Open/closed lists, the pub­licly announced dif­fer­ences:

- Open-list sys­tem sup­port­ers believe that the sys­tem will give the Iraqi vot­ers the free­dom to exclude of can­di­dates who do not want to vote for them.

- Closed-list sys­tem sup­port­ers believe that the sys­tem helps to con­cen­trate the votes.

Another argu­ment from the Kur­dish parties:

The Iraqi peo­ple think that the poor per­for­mance of par­lia­ment is due to the “closed-list”, the fact is the polit­i­cal blocs failed to put the right per­son in the right place — Azza­man.

The unan­nounced dif­fer­ences:

1– The closed-lists sys­tem will lead to the rise of the tra­di­tional par­ties who are cur­rently in the Green Zone in Baghdad.

2– The open-lists will lead to the rise of many new polit­i­cal fig­ures and would change the bal­ance of new parliamentary.

Exter­nal effects:

Iran: Tehran gave remarks of its sup­port to INA coali­tion, which is prob­a­bly will obtain the major­ity votes of Iraqi Shiites.

The U.S.: Inter­view with for­mer Sahwa leader and the leader of Al-Bayariq bloc (coali­tion with Maliki’s “State of Law”) Ali Hatim:

Unfor­tu­nately, [in 2005 elec­tion] fraud has been under the super­vi­sion of the Amer­i­cans because they tried to sup­port some lists at the expense of oth­ers. this time all Al-Anbar province will turn against Amer­i­cans, and they will be baned from enter­ing the province again if they try to forge the com­ing elec­tion results — Awan 16-10-2009.

Why it is hard to adopt the elec­tion law in the par­lia­ment:

- Joe Biden dur­ing his recent visit to Iraq, he dis­cussed the need to agree on the elec­tion law as soon as possible.

- Barack Obama in his meet­ing with Jalal Tal­a­bani urged to adopt the elec­tion law as soon as possible.

- The U.S. embassy in Bagh­dad in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the U.S. mil­i­tary lead­er­ship issued a joint state­ment ask­ing the Iraqi par­lia­ment to speed up the process of adopt­ing the elec­tion law.

- Ed Mek­lert the spe­cial the United Nations Envoy in Iraq asked the Iraqi gov­ern­ment the need to com­plete the new elec­tion law as soon as possible.

Despite all the above, the ques­tion is why Al-Maliki insists to delay the elec­tion law?

And the answer is that Al-Maliki wants to buy time arrang­ing his efforts to stay in office:

- To reach a deal to get the sup­port of Kur­dish par­ties, Maliki cur­rently is nego­ti­at­ing the Kur­dish par­ties on Kirkuk and Mosul, to include the two provinces within the Kur­dis­tan domain in exchange for a com­mit­ment to vote for Maliki’s “State of Law”.

- To reach a deal which gets him the sup­port of Sunni move­ments and indi­vid­u­als, by promis­ing Sun­nis more num­ber of seats in the parliament.