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October constitution most likely past { October 15 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/15/AR2005101500469.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/15/AR2005101500469.html
Polls Close in Iraq
Large Numbers Turn Out Despite Sporadic Violence
By John Ward Anderson and Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, October 15, 2005; 1:09 PM
BAGHDAD, Oct. 15 -- Millions of voters in Iraq ignored the threat of attack and cast ballots Saturday in a constitutional referendum that was remarkably calm, with isolated insurgent attacks on polling stations and sporadic clashes with U.S. Marines west of Baghdad, but no major bombings or mass killings.
As the polls closed at 5 p.m. after 10 hours of voting, it appeared that the worst violence of the day occurred in Ramadi, an insurgent and Sunni Arab stronghold about 55 miles west of the capital, where firefights between militants and U.S. soldiers forced three of the city's main polling centers to close shortly after opening at 7 a.m. Hospital officials said that at least seven people seeking to vote were killed by insurgents.
The continuous crackle of gunfire kept streets there empty and lead to a 10 percent voter turnout, said Ammar Rawi, manager of electoral commission in Ramadi, who added that most of the "turnout came from the outskirts of the city."
Insurgents also attacked five of Baghdad's 1,200 polling stations with shootings and bombs, wounding seven voters, the Associated Press reported, and six Iraqi soldiers were killed in a bomb blast north of Baghdad and a mortar attack south of the capital, according to Reuters news service.
But the vote was surprising quiet compared to legislative elections in January, when at least 44 people were killed in nine separate attacks on polling centers.
This time, with a few exceptions, insurgent threats to kill voters did not materialize, allowing scores of people to vote on a proposed constitution that would increase the role of Islam in the government and formalize Iraq's democracy. Turnout was described as exceptionally high in Sunni Arab regions that had largely boycotted January's election. Voting in Shiite and Kurdish neighborhoods was brisk, but appeared lower than in January, when about 58 percent of registered voters cast ballots.
Sunni leaders sent conflicting messages to their followers about whether to vote in today's referendum. That confusion and insurgent threats to target voters led to uncertainty about whether Sunnis would turnout en masse to cast ballots.
But according to U.S. Army officials in Salah Aldin, an overwhelmingly Sunni province north of Baghdad, by 11:30 a.m., more than 33,000 had already voted in the town of Baiji, 22,000 in Awaj, 17,000 in Tikrit and 20,000 in Samarra. Voting in Samarra was so heavy that polling places ran out of ballots in the early afternoon, officials said, and more were brought in under U.S. support.
Sunni voters in the area interviewed by reporters were nearly unanimous in saying that they had voted against the constitution, which many Sunnis believe is deeply flawed.
In Tikrit, the home town of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, about 20 Iraqi policemen were the first to vote at a polling station they were responsible for protecting.
"This constitution was written by the occupation and will never change anything in the country," police Lt. Col. Amir Abdul Karim said, explaining his no vote.
Elsewhere in town, Iraqi Army Lt. Mahmoud Nadhum urged his colleagues to reject the charter "because it calls for separation and sectarianism," he explained to a reporter. "We don't want this constitution because we want a unified Iraq."
In other parts of Iraq, particularly areas dominated by the majority Shiites, voting was heavy, and enthusiasm for the constitution was high.
In Najaf, a Shiite-majority city south of Baghdad that is widely expected to endorse the constitution, more than two-dozen people lined up outside the Sajedat High School for Girls, waiting for election monitors to let them in at 7 a.m. On the streets outside, police outnumbered pedestrians about 10-to-one.
"I'll say yes, yes to the constitution with all 10 of my fingers," said Nada Abdul Hassan Akashi, a 26-year-old mother clad in a black abaya, or traditional robe, who came to vote with her husband and three young daughters. "My daughters were so excited, and I wanted the new generation to see democracy."
In Mosul, a city in the northern, Kurdish area of Iraq, Samir Khalil, a 38-year-old laborer, said he would vote in favor of the constitution because it "represents me and the interests of Iraq."
But physically casting the ballot required strategic calculation. "I am just waiting for someone to come with me," he said, casting a nervous glance down an empty street. "I don't want to be alone in the street, where I'll be the only target."
Sarwa Abdul Wahab said voters arrived at her Mosul polling center in large numbers. "You could see the happiness on their faces, as if they've achieved a goal," she said.
About 35 miles west of Mosul, families reportedly turned out to vote en masse in Tall Afar, where more than 50 people were killed in two attacks earlier this week when suicide bombers blew themselves up in a crowded market and outside an army recruiting center.
In Washington, President Bush praised the voting in his weekly radio address. "By casting their ballots, the Iraqi people deal a severe blow to the terrorists and send a clear message to the world: Iraqis will decide the future of their country through peaceful elections, not violent insurgency," Bush said,
He mentioned a letter, which was recently discovered and allegedly written by an al Qaeda leader, that points to the U.S. experience in Vietnam and suggests that U.S. troops will leave Iraq soon. "Al Qaeda believes that America can be made to run again. They are gravely mistaken. America will not run, and we will not forget our responsibilities," the president said. " . . . We have stood by the Iraqi people through two elections, and we will stand by them until they have established a free nation that can govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself."
The voting came amid extraordinarily tight security across the country, as tens of thousands of Iraqi police, Iraqi Army troops and U.S. and coalition soldiers manned checkpoints, surrounded polling stations and patrolled streets. Iraq declared a four-day holiday around the referendum, closing schools and government offices and shuttering many shops.
Iraq also sealed its borders, closed Baghdad International Airport, threw a nightcurfew across the entire country and banned all private vehicles from driving on the roads on election day, leaving Iraq's 15.5 million registered voters to walk to polling centers if they wanted to cast a ballot.
While 450 people were killed in the 19 days before the referendum, according to a tally by the Associated Press, the tough security steps immediately before the vote discouraged large public gatherings of the sort that often attract suicide bombers. The measures also apparently helped force insurgents underground, bringing a relative calm to Iraq in the two days immediately preceding Saturday's poll.
But that did not stop insurgent groups from launching a concerted voter intimidation campaign in many areas of the country, particularly in the so-called Sunni Triangle north and west of Baghdad, where leaflets were passed out in the days before the election threatening death to anyone who voted. Underscoring the message, in the run-up to the referendum, militants staged at least five attacks on the offices of the Iraqi Islamic Party, an influential Sunni group that publicly backed passage of the constitution, and the homes of some of its leaders.
Under the terms of the referendum, the constitution would be approved if a simple majority of those casting ballots vote in favor of it, which seems a near certainty. It was drafted principally by Shiite and Kurdish leaders, whose people account for about 60 and 20 percent, respectively, of Iraq's 27 million people, and they have strongly urged their followers to vote "yes." However, there is also a veto provision that was designed to protect Iraq's minority communities: if two thirds of the voters in three of Iraq's 18 provinces vote against the constitution, the referendum fails.
That has raised the possibility that the minority Sunni Arabs, who comprise about 20 percent of the country's population and who have a majority in at least three provinces, could ban together to vote down the constitution. But 11th hour changes to the proposed document this week by Iraq's parliament won the support of several Sunni political groups and influential leaders, which analysts, diplomats and politicians here say could split the Sunni opposition enough to assure the referendum's success.
Results are expected in two or three days, with uncertified final results scheduled to be announced Oct. 20.
Sunnis were particularly concerned that the constitution permits such strong regional autonomy that Iraq could eventually break up, with Kurds and Shiites creating oil-rich countries in the north and south, and Sunnis being relegated to the impoverished west and center of Iraq. Instead of unifying and pacifying Iraq, they said, the constitution as written could spark a bloody civil war.
That spawned this week's changes to the constitution, which allow for the next parliament, which is scheduled to be elected in December, to make amendments to the charter and put them to voters in another referendum next year. If today's referendum is defeated, a new interim parliament will be elected in December to draft another proposed constitution.
Iraqi television showed live pictures of Kurdish President Jalal Talabani and Shiite Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari being among the first to cast ballots at a station inside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.
"The constitution will pave the way for national unity," Jafari told reporters. "It is an historic day, and I am optimistic that the Iraqis will say 'yes.' "
While concrete blast barriers were erected around many polling stations to protect voters from attack, in Falluja, site of some of the worst fighting of the war, the centers were largely unfortified and were guarded by local citizens and tribal sheikhs
Mohammed Abdul Khaliq, director of the city's 38 polling places, said in a telephone interview that about 7,500 people had arrived to cast ballots in the first 30 minutes.
Muhammed Jamaili, manager of the electoral commission in Fallujah, said later that 93 percent of the city's 257,000 registered voters participated in the referendum.
Falluja resident Najiya Ahme Ali, 55, said she voted against the constitution "for the sake of my son, who was killed by [top Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab] Zarqawi because he was a translator for the Americans." She said she voted no "because the religious clerics issued [orders] to vote against the constitution as it divides Iraq, and I trust them."
Despite vows that U.S. soldiers would maintain a low profile, U.S. Marine Humvees in Ramadi were blaring tape-recorded messages from loudspeakers urging people to vote from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. The messages warned that any private vehicles and motorcycles spotted breaking the ban on travel in the streets would be shot at.
In Kirkuk, about 150 miles north of the capital, turnout was divided early in the day, with large numbers of voters casting ballots in the Kurdish areas of the city, and polling stations nearly empty in its Arab and Turkoman neighborhoods.
At the Kindi polling station, where voters lined up long before opening in January parliamentary elections, no one had cast a ballot in the first 45 minutes of voting on Saturday, elections officials at the center said. The streets outside were empty except for military patrols and checkpoints.
In Sulaymaniyah, a Kurdish-controlled city in northern Iraq, turnout was light in the first hours of voting. At the Kanes Kan elementary school polling center, only four people waited in line to vote around 8:30 a.m. Alan Azit, 26, an election coordinator at the school, said turnout was much heavier in the early hours of voting on Jan. 30 when Kurds went to the polls to elect both a new central Iraqi government and a regional government. "It's less because there are no political parties included, and people aren't engaged if the political parties are not part of the election," he said.
In Baghdad, 70-year-old Hussein Rustam walked slowly to polling center 65001 in Karrada, a heavily Shiite neighborhood, and arrived two minutes before opening. A machine gun nest was perched atop the building. He negotiated the snaking spools of razor wire and concrete blast barriers outside the entrance, then was searched by soldiers as officials from the Electoral Commission studied his identification.
"This is only a first step on the long road to build the constitutional process," he said. "And we should all take part in the process, because Iraq is home for all and we all must agree to live together."
Finer contributed from Najaf. Staff writers Steve Fainaru in Balad, Jackie Spinner in Sulaymaniyah, and special correspondents K. I. Ibrahim in Baghdad, Dlovan Brwari in Mosul, Salih Saif Aldin in Tikrit, and Saad Sarhan and Naseer Nouri in Najaf contributed to this report.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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