OUT-OF-COUNTRY ELECTIONS FOR THE TRANSITIONAL NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF IRAQ

After voting, Amman.

As the deadline approached on Sunday, 30 January, at the Ammourieh elementary school in Jabal Al-Nasr, Amman, the last voters were filing in. All wore the same look of subdued expectation. As they left, two of the polling staff who had not yet voted lined up to have their registration cards checked, their index fingers dipped in purple ink and their ballot paper stamped and folded. They then took their places behind the cardboard screen.

At five o'clock it began to rain. The ballot boxes were closed. The observer from one of the Iraqi political parties wrote down the numbers of all the plastic seals on the boxes and went on his way, apparently satisfied. But the day was far from over for the polling station staff. A long process of meticulous tallying and reconciling of figures occupied the next hour and a half. It got steadily colder in the classroom.

Eventually the work was done, the figures were all double, triple and quadruple checked, and the ballot boxes were carried to a waiting van and locked inside. The polling station presiding officer climbed in the front. Flanking the van was a police car. Behind, a Toyota truck waited with three helmeted policemen standing in the back, one of them manning a heavy machine gun mounted on the roof. With sirens blaring and lights flashing, the convoy moved off at high speed towards the counting centre, a fortified warehouse behind the airport. It took all of my driver's skills to keep up. Lurching through the suburbs, it was refreshing to watch the theatricalities of a police convoy deployed to protect ballot papers rather than high-ranking dignitaries.

In 14 countries around the world, from Calgary to Tehran, from Rotterdam to Damascus, the same scenes had been played out over three days, as expatriate Iraqis voted for their Transitional National Assembly. The out-of country polls for the Iraqi Assembly had been set up in a very short time. The Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq (IECI) decided to entrust the task to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) towards the end of 2004. From its field headquarters in Amman, IOM, an agency with extensive experience in organising such external voting programmes for elections in places such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, East Timor and Afghanistan, had just 69 days to set up its operation before the elections began on 28 January.

Despite much tighter deadlines for the IPU, seven Member Parliaments managed to deploy parliamentary observers to monitor the voting at the polling stations in their countries. In the event, there was unanimous acclaim for the nearly faultless organisation of the poll. More than 80 per cent of the staff running the polling stations in the 14 countries were themselves Iraqis, and everybody was struck by their professionalism and dedication. The voters had for the most part never cast a ballot before in their lives. Their questions were answered with patience, and delicate situations - such as in Damascus where the veils worn by many women voters hampered visual identification - were handled with tact. Similar sensitivity was shown in assisting the considerable number of illiterate voters.

The discouraging side to all this was that relatively few people had registered to vote. Figures for expatriate Iraqis run to well over one million, but only a little more than a quarter of that figure actually turned up at the registration centres. Those who did had often travelled hundreds of miles. One IPU observer in the Netherlands told of a couple who flew from Italy to Amsterdam to register and then spent the next few days in a hotel waiting for voting to begin. Doubtless many were effectively disenfranchised by such difficulties. The reason most often referred to in explaining the low registration rate, both in Europe and the Middle East, was that many expatriate Iraqis who felt their legal status was questionable were afraid that their personal details would make their way into the hands of the police of their host countries. IOM did its best to make it clear that all details would be treated in strict confidentiality, but this was not sufficient to allay all their fears. Widely commented on by the media on the Friday and Saturday, the out-of-country elections and the issues related to them were completely dwarfed by the morning of Sunday, 31 January, when long queues started to form at the polling stations in Iraq.

ANWAR IBRAHIM, FORMER MALAYSIAN DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER, MEETS THE COMMITTEE ON THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF PARLIAMENTARIANS

The IPU Committee on the Human Rights

The IPU Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians held its 108th session in Geneva in January 2005. It elected a new President of the Committee, Mrs. Ann Clwyd, member of the British House of Commons, who replaced Mr. Mahamane Ousmane, the President of the National Assembly of Niger.

Mrs. Veronika Nedvedova (Czech Republic, Vice-President of the Committee), Mr. Luis Hierro (President of the General Assembly and the Senate of Uruguay), and Mr. Manouchehr Mottaki (Member of the Majlis Shoraye Eslami of the Islamic Republic of Iran, substitute member for the Asia Pacific Group), were also present.

At the House of Parliaments, the Committee met with Mr. Anwar Ibrahim, the former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of Malaysia, whose case has been examined by the IPU since 1999.

Interview

Q: After attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, you came to the IPU. What was your message?
Anwar Ibrahim: I came to express my profound gratitude to the Secretary General and to the Committee. They have been consistent in honouring the aspirations of the IPU. It is a great task to protect the human rights of parliamentarians. During my dreadful experience - six years of solitary confinement in Malaysian prisons -, and even in the worst time, when the situation seemed hopeless, I had a note from the IPU saying that there was a human rights committee meeting, and that it wanted a response from me, through my wife or my counsel. It gives so much hope to know that there is someone in a remote part of the Earth who is deliberating on this, and who remains committed to the ideals of democracy, human rights and human dignity.

Q: Do you think the work of the Committee has an influence?
A.I.: We know that Malaysia and many other countries fear that the abuses they inflict on innocent citizens are being discussed throughout the world, and this is of course a source of embarrassment, particularly when the authorities claim that they are democratic and that the parliament, the judiciary and the media are fully independent, when this is clearly not the case. In Malaysia, for example, we still have the draconian Internal Security Act, under which people can be detained without trial indefinitely.

Q: Do you think that it is important that the IPU Committee consists of members of parliament from various regions?
A.I.: The IPU Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians is unique. Of course, there is also the International Commission of Jurists, composed of judicial experts, and there are other NGOs which represent activists, but the uniqueness of the IPU resides in the fact that it operates within the system. It is tied to the principles of democracy, human rights, human dignity and freedom. Members of parliament, unlike government ministers, foreign ministers or the diplomatic community, are not mouthpieces of their governments, and in principle have more freedom to speak out, although in certain countries this may be risky. I must say that within the constraints of having to work with some parliaments which are far from democratic or the result of free and fair elections, the IPU is able to work wonders. As one who has been a victim, I certainly appreciate this more. I have told the Secretary General and the Committee that I will certainly reciprocate and express my gratitude by continuing to support the good work of the IPU.

Q: Generally speaking, do you think that the situation of human rights all over the world, and also in Iraq, has improved, or is it more difficult today?
A.I.: Any comparison of atrocities or abuses of human rights which were committed in the past can only be relative, but we are certainly in a better situation now. But even then, this can be misleading; when it comes to human rights, we are dealing with each and every individual human being, and so you cannot rely on statistics. The pain inflicted on a person or on his wife and family members is unimaginable. Nevertheless, there is undeniably a trend in the civilised world today towards democracy, human rights, and dignity. Now that I am a free man, I am in a better position to observe. The situation is still pathetic; it is dreadful, and we have much to do to prevent human rights abuses from occurring. The situation in Iraq is of course the extreme example, because of foreign occupation, but you must remember, and I have said this consistently as a Muslim, it is all the more unfortunate because the Muslims there were muted during decades of atrocities inflicted by the so-called Muslim leader Saddam Hussein against his own people. It is therefore not just a western, American design that we should condemn, but any form of atrocity. We should condemn the violence of the perpetrators of violence, but we should also condemn the violence perpetrated by the State. The IPU and all human rights organisations will have to do more, because the hypocrisy of political leaders – I can say this with some confidence as a person having been involved in politics for some time – is certainly untenable. They speak about democracy and free elections, about respecting the dignity of men, but in actual fact they run contrary to all these ideals. This is a very pertinent moral issue of conscience. We have to encourage and motivate more people, the young in particular, to demand that the excesses be stopped.

Q: Do you intend to withdraw from political life?
A.I.: No. On the contrary. This experience has convinced me even more that in politics, with a strong sense of conviction, with moral principles, you can move ahead.