Alwaght- Iraqi political groups are at loggerheads over election law amendments these days, a challenge emerging after year-long tensions over election of president and formation of a new government among them ended in October last year. Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, one of whose commitments were reforming election law and paving the way for early elections, in recent days started a motion along with some political factions to realize his promises. In this connection, a number of lawmakers, spearheaded by those of the Shiite Coordination Framework (SCF) drafted an amendment for change to the election law supporting the Sainte-Laguë method which allows the major parties to distribute votes among their candidates.
Heated debates are forming among the politicians about government and parliament push to draft a new law for parliamentary and provincial council elections. In the draft law submitted for approval, the parliamentary and provincial council elections are proposed to be held in the same day. Although a large number of political factions had previously opposed the holding of early elections, new elections will be held later this year if new law is approved.
The amendment of the election law has been proposed by the State Administration Coalition (SAC), as all the main forces of the parliament support it. The coalition consists of SCF blocs, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the Al-Siyadeh and Al-Azzam Sunni blocs and the Babylon Christian faction, and has 270 out of total 325 seats.
In an interview in defense of the draft of the new law, leader of the State of Law Coalition Jassim Al-Bayati said: “The law of provincial councils, which was established based on one constituency for each province, is better than the recent parliamentary election law .” He pointed out that there are differences in views of the lawmakers on the Sainte-Laguë method especially divisors 1.7 and 1.9 which will repeat without undergoing essential changes.
What is Sainte-Laguë method?
The Sainte-Laguë method, or Webster method and major fractions method, is a method for allocating seats in a parliament among federal states, or among parties in a party-list proportional representation system and is used in countries that work with a proportional representation structure and is based on dividing the votes of coalitions exponentially by 1.4, and in this case, small coalitions would have a chance to win. In the 2014 national elections, leaders of large blocs passed what is referred to as “modified Sainte-Laguë method,” raising the initial divisor from 1.0 to 1.7. They further increased the divisor to 1.9 later, cutting the chance of victory of independent and non-military candidates, as well as nascent and small movements, and increasing that of large blocs.
Some political leaders believe that divisor 1.9 is unfair as it empowers the large blocs. The critics want a modification to 1.0 to grant the independents and small blocs a larger chance to make it to the parliament. The law has been amended several times and has always had opponents and supporters, but this time a higher coefficient is supposed to be given to powerful parties.
How current law works
The current parliamentary election law was approved following the October 2019 protests that swept through the country, and it applies a multi-constituency system, according to which each candidate can be selected for only one polling station, and votes go to individual candidates, not political parties. In the previous law, a constituency was considered as unified, something working in favor of the major political parties where votes could possibility be transferred from one candidate to another candidate of the same party.
The current law provided conditions for the independents and small parties to win more than 40 seats in parliamentary elections. But the new reforms seek to return to the previous law, and in addition to changing the election method, voting abroad will be resumed and the manual counting will replace electronic method. Reinstating the modified Sainte Laguë method effectively means that the situation will return to the way it was before the October 2019 protests, while the passage of the current law was one of the few practical achievements of the protests and led to a de-escalation of tensions.
The current election law requires Iraqi provinces to be divided into multiple constituencies, so that every 100,000 voters in a constituency have one representative in parliament. In the current election law, some people with 100,000 votes and others with even 2,000 votes managed to win a parliamentary seat, but if the law is amended, in each province, the parties that get the largest number of votes can transfer their votes to members who have not secured adequate votes to enter the parliament, something working in the best interests of large parties. On the other hand, the new law favors the provinces with the largest population, which means they can send more representatives to the parliament.
The SCF member parties tend to return to unified election structure system instead of multiple constituencies and using Sant Laguë method, which have led to controversy and political protests. According to some observers, the insistence of the SCF and other forces to return to older version of Saint Laguë method appears to be for getting rid of the independent representatives who caused tensions in the previous elections.
Wisam Nadhir, a researcher of Iraqi election law, suggests that the complicated Sainte Laguë method’s calculation denominators more suit the Iraqi case than the multiple constituency law. But the difference in the vote distribution coefficient may mean the preference of small or large blocs. Experts believe that the 2021 elections which were based on distribution of quota based on small and medium provinces caused an imbalance in the political system and voting and a return to regionalism and sectarianism.
In a report on the debate, Al Monitor suggests that “the new amendment will allow dominant political parties to expand their influence at the provincial level against the new-formed independent forces that arose from the 2019-2020 nationwide protests. The most controversial part of the new amendment is adopting the Sainte-Laguë method to allocate seats among the political parties based on a party-list proportional representation system.... The Coordination Framework, which includes the State of Law and nominated Sudani to become prime minister, is also seeking to integrate the parliamentary and provincial elections under one united law. If both elections were held at the same time, the winning forces could dominate both parliament and the provincial councils.”
What does the opposition say?
Although many Iraqis demand change of election law, there are others who do not find the new law serving national interests. Many of the newly created parties, such as Ishraqat Kanoon, Imtedad and some independent members of parliament are against the reforms, and it is expected that the Najaf clergy will not support the reforms, as their representatives have repeatedly expressed their support for the demands of the 2019 demonstrations for election law changes.
The independent members of parliament refused to advocate amendments to the election law and called for the formation of a united opposition front to present an alternative draft that would guarantee the “support of democracy” in the country. These lawmakers argue that the amendments put to the vote include dangerous legal provisions that undermine democracy, election participation, fair competition and transparency of the election process.
Ihsan al-Shammari, the head of the Iraqi Center for Political Thinking, considered the return to the Sainte Laguë method as a big setback in the commitments of the forces and political parties and their rhetoric for reforms, especially since this law no longer corresponds to the Iraqi political structure, to the ideals of the new political elites, and even to the voters who seek a law to pave the way for their candidates to enter the parliament. Sheikh Safa al-Baghdadi, a researcher of political affairs, asked the members of parliament to reject any amendment to the election law, because this law works against a large part of the independents and nascent movements, and if a province becomes a region, they will be present in the next parliament.
Amer Abdul Jabbar, an independent lawmaker and former minister of transportation, considers the insistence of SCF on the draft election law and local elections against the demands of the people and clergy of Najaf.
“As emerging powers meeting at the confluence of a will to initiate a reform project for a real change, we reject to approve of this law.
Baqir al-Zubaidi, the former interior minister and head of the Injaz political movement said: “The problems of the electronic system have proven its inefficiency, and on this basis, before talking about the election law, electronic counting and voting should be completely revoked from the provincial council elections. Whatever laws in the future are approved, as long as there are fraud tools, they will never matter. The provincial councils do not provide basic services or rebuild the infrastructure, and they only became a place for conflict between some parties, and it is the people who pay the cost of the disputes.”
Opponents argue that if this bill is approved, the majority-holding SCF will also dominate the provincial councils simultaneously and can appoint the governors. This will deepen the gaps between the SCF and Sadrist Movement which is opposed to the bill.
With the approval of new election law, the Sadrists will also be affected, because their influence is stronger in some areas, and they took advantage of this opportunity in last year’s parliamentary elections, in which Sainte Laguë method was not used, and won 74, the highest number for them since 2003. Since the movement’s representatives resigned from parliament, they have no power to block the new amendment, but Muqtada al-Sadr and independent forces have already expressed strong opposition to the issue. Sources close to al-Sadr have said that they will boycott the elections if this amendment is approved. Given al-Sadr’s record of deep disputes with the SCF, he will not sit idly by and will try to counter this motion.
Despite the opposition of some parties, supporters of the amendments believe that the proposed election law is in the interest of Iraqis. Ali al-Amouri, a political analyst, said that the SCF is capable of adopting the laws it wishes to adopt due to the parliamentary majority. Al-Amouri believes that the modified Sainte Laguë method is highly suitable for Iraqis because it preserves the rights of the blocs and prevents the dispersion of the votes.
“However, I believe that the amendments will undergo modifications that address the concerns of the opposition,” Al-Amouri noted.
Given the experience of a year of political differences in Iraq, it is predicted that Sadrist supporters would again return to streets and cause a new security crisis. Political differences pushed down the turnout rates to below 40 percent in 2018 and 2021 elections, and should Sadrists and small coalitions boycott the election in reaction, the turnout rates will be even lower.
