Iraqis voted enthusiastically and in large numbers yesterday for a full-term four-year parliament. It will appoint a government and amend the constitution agreed in a flawed referendum last October. This is an inspiring event, the first relatively independent election held there and one in which all Iraq's many ethnic and religious groups have participated, without significant violence.
The great conundrum is whether it can usher in a government capable of holding the country together as it faces possible regional disintegration, continuing military resistance to the United States-led occupation and the civil conflicts which pitch Sunni and Shia and Kurdish and Arab Iraqis against one another. The rules governing such contentious issues as control of taxation and energy resources and of the armed forces must be decided alongside attempts to resolve such cleavages.
Negotiations will now proceed on finding a president who will be elected by a 70 per cent vote in the parliament after the final results are declared and who will then appoint a prime minister. It is hoped this can overcome the fragmentation which saw 231 different political entities brought together in the 19 groups contesting the election. Emerging from it are five main coalitions, ranging from the United Iraqi Alliance based on Shia Arab groups, through the Kurdistan Allliance, the secular and multi-ethnic Iraqi National List to the two groupings of Iraqi Sunnis, whose strong participation for the first time was the most notable feature of yesterday's voting. Electoral rules widely accepted as fair and this high turnout create a potential framework of legitimacy.
The critical issue facing whatever regime comes out of this complex process will be how to assert Iraq's independence by disengaging from foreign occupation and avoiding collapse as it does so. Occupation stokes up the resistance, which thrives on it. Breaking this vicious circle will be difficult indeed, but cannot be avoided over the coming year. A timetable for the scaling down and withdrawal of foreign troops must be agreed. This has been resisted by the Bush administration, even as it acknowledges the mistakes made during the war and prepares to reduce its military presence after the major shift in US public opinion about it.
Everyone agrees this will be a fraught and highly risky process. A stable outcome is certainly not guaranteed and remains quite unlikely. Iraq's human, civil and physical infrastructures have been substantially destroyed, while the US has laid down a legal and regulatory framework blatantly suiting its own interests. Most Iraqis believe they are worse off now than under Saddam, 50 per cent say the invasion was wrong, only 19 per cent say it was absolutely right and two-thirds want the foreign troops out, according to a recent opinion poll by ABC/Time. Nine out of 10 want a strong single leadership to emerge, while most favour religious participation in the government, but not a clericalist state. Tackling all this is a huge task for whoever wins this election.