Best wishes to Iraq and its people. I hope the polls go OK with minimal violence.
Time to chain these Wahabibi MAToos get chained like dogs.
Polls open as Iraqis vote on landmark constitution
Sat Oct 15, 2005 6:03 AM BST
By Mariam Karouny
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Polls opened on time and Iraqis began casting ballots in a landmark referendum on Saturday, with up to 15 million people set to say “yes” or “no” to a new constitution that backers hope will unite the torn country.
Amid intense security, including a ban on all traffic, voters dribbled into polling stations in Baghdad as they opened at 7 a.m. (5 a.m. British time). They are due to close at 5 p.m., unless attacks cause delays and some are kept open longer.
In Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone compound, where the Iraqi government is headquartered, President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari were two of the first to cast votes.
“I voted ‘yes’ and I urge all Iraqis, no matter their different ethnicities and religions … to vote ‘yes’ to the constitution,” Talabani, a Kurd, told reporters.
The Kurdish and Shi’ite-led government strongly backs the constitution, which it was largely responsible for drafting.
The referendum will pass and the charter ratified if more than half of voters say “Yes” and as long as two thirds of voters in three of Iraq’s 18 provinces do not say “No”.
Fears of a blocking “No” vote have receded in the past few days after a leading Sunni Muslim party said it now backed the constitution after Shi’ite and Kurdish leaders agreed to consider some amendments next year.
Most Sunni Muslims, who make up about 20 percent of the 27 million population, are believed to oppose the charter, however.
Talabani said he didn’t think the referendum would fail.
Those in Baghdad and towns to the south spent a hot night without electricity ahead of the vote after a sabotage attack on power lines blacked out the capital – not in itself unusual, but a discomfiting reminder of the militants’ reach.
For some voters, as in January’s election for the first post-Saddam Hussein parliament and an end to dictatorship, there will be joy as they smear purple ink on a finger to show they have cast their ballot.
For others, there will be fear, as insurgents threaten to kill any who take part in the U.S.-sponsored political process. And some will vote in anger against a draft charter they say gives too much to rival religious and ethnic communities.
More than 100,000 Iraqi police and soldiers will protect more than 6,000 polling stations over the day, with U.S. and other foreign troops ready to help out should insurgents attack.
Baghdad was calm early on, but militants have threatened to attack polls, as they did in January’s election.
DIVIDED OPINION
Patchy opinion polls and the sectarian arithmetic of Iraq say the constitution will be ratified comfortably. But talking to Iraqis across the country, there is also disquiet over a text pushed through to meet an American-backed timetable in the face of misgivings, especially among Sunni Arabs.
After threats from Sunni Arab insurgents, both Iraqi nationalists and international Islamists like al Qaeda, borders were sealed for the vote. Shops and businesses have been closed since Thursday and private vehicles were banned from the roads.
The spiritual leader of much of the 60-percent Shi’ite majority, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, as well as Kurdish leaders representing up to 20 percent of Iraqis, are urging a “Yes”, probably ensuring a nationwide vote in favour.
Division among Saddam’s once dominant Sunnis, heightened by a U.S.-brokered compromise this week that means the constitution will be submitted to a sweeping review and possible amendment next year, has reduced the risk of a veto.
But the Iraqi government and U.S. officials have been careful to stress that they will abide by the result and count it a success if, unlike in January, Sunnis at least grant the political process some legitimacy by going to the polls.
“The key thing is that Iraqis should take part,” Shi’ite Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said in an address on state television the night before the referendum.
“This is a constitution for today,” he said. “The people can amend this constitution.”
As the number of Americans to die in Iraq nears 2,000, polls there show increasing unease about the occupation.
Many Sunnis, and some Shi’ites and others, say provisions for regional autonomy under a new, federal state structure risk breaking Iraq into sectarian and ethnic regions at war over oil.
Secular leaders and women’s rights groups complain about the extent to which Islamic law is incorporated into the text.
Iraq’s Sunni-ruled Arab neighbours see the hand of militant Shi’ite Iran in the rise of Iraq’s southern Shi’ite majority.
Failure for the charter would mean that an election in December would elect only an interim assembly, as in January, charged with drafting a new constitution from scratch; this time though it seems Sunnis would take part and be fully represented.
If the text is ratified on Saturday, December’s vote will produce a fully empowered, four-year parliament and may well usher in a very different coalition government from the present one dominated by Shi’ite Islamists and their Kurdish allies.