Iraqi Elections Bans: A Flashback from The Past

By: Ali Rawaf

It is no wonder that the recent election bans on a number of Iraqi politicians and parliamentarian are prejudice and illegitimate.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not a big fan of Salih Al Mutlaq or many of the banned politicians but I do sense the tension that has risen from the ban.

If the Iraqi election commission truly believed that those politicians should be disqualified, why haven’t been any mentioning in November or December, a month or two before the Iraqi elections were originally set to be held.

Salih Al-Mutlaq, though has truly said many things that can be labeled as Baathist, has been a member of the Iraqi parliament for the past four years with being questioned about any of his Baath promotion. Shouldn’t we hold accountable of the elected officials just as much as we do the ones running to be elected.

The majority of the candidates in the banned list are Sunni. This can be very detrimental as we shape our government for the next four years. Though there is no real census, no one wants to be underrepresented.

We cannot afford to have a big sector of the Iraqi population as part of the voting population. This banning of candidates has truly reminded Iraqis like me that government officials are still holding on to the same issues with which we struggled in the past elections: sectarianism, animosity, and insecurity.

If the commission doesn’t truly take into consideration the appeals of the banned candidates and transparently reviews them, the elections in Iraq will be nothing but a recap of the former elections round.

*Picture is used from the Time Magazine website.