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Why direct elections in Iraq could backfire

The newly arrived UN team will explore whether June elections could create instability or favor radical sectors.



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Countdown to June 30




As for Iraq, the US plan has run into opposition from the country's most respected religious leader, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who has been joined by many of Iraq's eminent Shiite clerics in favoring direct elections. Elections would presumably favor Iraq's Shiite majority.

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But the US has insisted there is not sufficient time to organize credible elections - and international elections experts generally confirm that elections can present their own set of problems.

"In a divided country coming out of war, elections are often seen by some groups as a way to confirm power," says Marina Ottaway, a democratization expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

In those conditions, precipitous elections can lead to deep divisions or even war - as happened in Angola in 1992, when the losers didn't accept the results.

Skewed outcomes?

Another problem with elections in transitional countries is that they can tend to favor the more radical elements in a society. "The truth is that democrats are not usually good organizers," Ms. Ottaway says. She points to the first elections in several countries of Eastern Europe after the breakup of the Soviet Union, elections that favored former communist parties.

In Algeria in 1992, Islamists won legislative elections over a bevy of poorly organized democratic political parties - until the military nullified the elections, plunging the country into a long and extremely violent civil conflict.

"Elections require some consensus about the rules of the game," says Ottaway. "They only work if the parties that lose are willing to accept defeat."

Some US officials fear results of elections for other reasons. A Shiite government might seek to restrict or reduce the US military presence in the country, for example. That possibility is one reason some administration officials are arguing against turning over control of Iraq's political transition to the UN.

Despite these concerns however, the fact remains that elections do convey a sense of legitimacy to political transitions. Given this, Ottaway and other elections experts say the UN could consider several alternatives to full elections.

One option would be what electoral experts call "transitional elections," which have lower standards of eligibility and registration. For example, the US has said there is no time to conduct a census that would serve as a basis for electoral rolls. But elections that are serving to form a provisional government can be held successfully with less-formal standards, experts say. Iraq specialists note that all Iraqis have a ration card from the days of the UN Oil for Food Program that could be used in the absence of a census.

South Africa, for one, held its first post-apartheid elections using national identity cards.

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