Iraqis are called to the urns on Sunday for anticipated legislative. The protest movement, weakened by a wave of assassinations, trouble to be heard.
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During the few months of the “October Revolution” 2019, on the sit-in of Baghdad and southern cities Shiite, tens of thousands of Iraqis claimed the holding of anticipated parliamentary elections . The organization of this ballot on Sunday 10 October, with six months ahead of the calendar and a new electoral law more favorable to independent candidates, is one of the few promises made to the protesters honored by the Prime Minister, Mustafa Al-Kadhimi. This unpublished challenge in the Shiite majority had shaken power. But the change so much hoped for the “revolutionaries of October”, determined to lower a political system undermined by the denominationalism and corruption, and dominated by the Shiite Islamist parties supported by Iran, may not be at the meeting. You.
In a debauchery of campaign expenses, promises of jobs and services, the parties in power have marked their electoral machines and their patronage networks, and for some of their militias, to mobilize their base. Faced with them, the protest movement, weakened by an assassination campaign attributed to pro-Iranian armed factions, difficult to be heard from an electorate earned by apathy and tried by abstention, particularly among young people – 60% of the 40 million inhabitants are under 25 years old. The nine parties born in its wake are demanding a state based on citizenship and control of arms by the state. They divide on the strategy – four called for voting boycott – and the novice candidates who beat campaign do it without resources or networks, and sometimes under threat.
“The basic requirements for the holding of democratic and equitable elections are not gathered. The money is used by the Islamist parties in power to make election promises. There is a flagrant violation of political rights: manifest or express an opinion that contradicts you to death, exile, intimidation and threats “, justifies Hussein Al-Ghoraiibi, Secretary General of the Beit Al-Madani Party (” National House “), who lives in the Clandestinity since its house has been targeted, in September 2020, by an explosive gear. Nassiriya’s 34-year-old lawyer lost dozens of friends in the repression of the protest, which made more than 600 dead. Dozens of leaders have been murdered since, others have exiled themselves.
“Change the system of the interior”
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