Expats register for Iraqi vote

2005-01-17 08:41

Sydney - Australia's 90 000-strong Iraqi population began registering on Monday for the first democratic elections in their country for half a century, in one of the biggest ever expatriate voting programmes.

It was the first wave of a week-long programme that will see tens of thousands of Iraqis around the world register for the landmark elections, with up to 40 000 expected to register in Australia alone.

The first exile to register was a 69-year-old Kurdish widow living in Sydney, Nassima Barzani, a refugee whose late husband was a bodyguard to Mustafa Barzani, one of the early leaders of the Kurdish nationalist movement.

She was followed by the head of the Shiite community in Australia, Ayatollah al-Sheikh Mohammad Hussein al-Ansari, the representative here of Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Expatriates have a week to register to vote for the landmark polls in 14 countries that have concluded agreements with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which is organising the overseas voting.

They will then have three days to cast their ballots, from January 28 to January 30, when Iraq itself goes to the polls.

No-one is sure how many will ultimately turn out to vote but the IOM has said that 2.5 million ballots have been ordered for the process.

"There is enormous interest. Iraqi communities from all around the country are contacting us," said Stephen Lennon, IOM programme manager in Washington.

"Those who have to travel a long distance understand the constraints... This is arguably the largest out-of-country voting ever to have taken place."

In Australia there have been some protests as only the cities of Melbourne and Sydney and the remote town of Shepparton have been equipped with polling stations, leaving the 9 000-strong Iraqi community around Perth a journey of at least 2 750 km to cast their ballots.

The Geneva-based IOM is also organising the expatriate vote in Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Iran, Jordan, the Netherlands, Syria, Sweden, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United States.

It has in the past organised the voting for a number of sensitive polls, such as ones in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Kosovo and East Timor.

Some 240 000 Iraqis are estimated to be eligible to vote in the United States alone.

Expatriates will vote only for a 275-seat Transitional National Assembly tasked with drawing up a new constitution.

Inside Iraq, voters will also elect 18 provincial councils and a Kurdish regional parliament.

Host countries are encouraging a strong turnout abroad - Iraqis voting in Jordan have been assured that there will be "no legal repercussions" from the authorities if they show up to vote with expired residency permits.

Ahmad Samarrai, a Dubai-based Iraqi economist advising the IOM, said the important thing was "to give Iraqis who wish to vote the opportunity and means to do so... and to ensure that the voting is fair and transparent".

- AFP