Iraqis voted in parliamentary elections yesterday in which Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani was seeking a second term but many disillusioned young voters saw it as a vehicle for established parties to divide up Iraq’s oil wealth.
Turnout in Iraq’s sixth parliamentary election since the US-led invasion of 2003 reached more than 55 per cent, the state election commission said.
Preliminary results were due to be announced during the next 48 hours, with the final outcome expected next week, commission officials said.
Sudani’s bloc was forecast to win the most seats but fall short of a majority, potentially meaning months of post-election talks among Shi’ite and Sunni Muslim as well as Kurdish parties to divvy up government posts and pick a prime minister.
“These elections (re)affirm the principle of peaceful transfer of power under Iraq’s new political system,” said Sudani as he arrived at a Baghdad polling station, pushing his mother in a wheelchair as he cast his vote.
Elections in Iraq are increasingly marked by low turnout. Many voters have lost faith in a system that has failed to break a pattern of state capture by powerful parties with armed loyalists, while ordinary Iraqis complain of endemic corruption, poor services and unemployment.
The vote this year featured a raft of young candidates hoping to break into politics, but their chances against old patronage networks were uncertain.
“This election will not depend on popularity. It will depend on spending money,” former prime minister Haider Al Abadi said during a televised interview last month.
“I will not vote for corrupt politicians or militia leaders because I don’t want to be complicit in their crimes over the next four years,” said Salih Abdul Hassan, a 64-year-old lawyer from the southern oil city of Basra.
The next government will need to navigate the delicate balance between US and Iranian influence, and manage dozens of armed groups that are closer to Iran and answerable more to their own leaders than to the state, all while facing growing pressure from Washington to dismantle those militias.
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