November 19, 2021
The vocally pro-Iranian parties running in Iraq’s parliamentary elections took a bad drubbing and have now resorted to “stop the steal” marches in the streets demanding that the results be changed.
There is no indication they are having any impact.
With the final allocation of seats announced, the big winner is the party sponsored by cleric Muqtada as-Sadr, who loudly opposes Iranian intervention in Iraq and has vowed to rein in the militias, and the big loser is the party run by the militias that Iran backs.
However, it is important to note that the change in the number of seats was caused by a new system for allocating seats. The party of Iran-backed militias actually got slightly more votes than Sadr’s party, so there is no sign that the Iran-backed groups are losing public support.
The Iran-backed militias saw their electoral list, known as the Fatah Alliance, drop from 48 seats to 17. The Sairoon list of Shiite cleric Muqtada as-Sadr soared from 54 seats to 73 seats, consolidating its status as the single largest bloc in the 329-member parliament.
Remembered for leading an insurgency against US forces, Sadr has in recent years sought to recast himself as a nationalist, railing against corruption and failing services. He is publicly critical of both Iranian and US influence in the country. In recent years he has criticized the flow of Iranian arms to Shiite militias in Iraq.
A Sunni faction headed by Parliament Speaker Mohamed al-Halbousi came in second with 37 seats the spot gained by the Fatah Alliance in 2018.
Hadi al-Ameri, leader of the Fatah Alliance, said the results were “a scam.” Abu Ali al-Askari, a senior leader with Kataib Hezbollah, one of the most hardline militias loyal to Iran, claimed voting manipulation and said the militias were being targeted.
The protests to have the October 10 election results overturned escalated to the level where the home of Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kazemi was attacked November 7 by drones. He received only superficial wounds. Almost everyone believes the drones were flown by Iran-backed militias. US officials, however, went out of their way to say they did not believe Tehran ordered the attack. US officials said they believe Iran is having trouble controlling the militias, now that it is paying the militias less money and Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleymani is no longer alive to guide them.
Douglas Silliman, a former US ambassador to Iraq from 2016 to 2019, said the assassination of Kazemi would not seem to be in Iran’s own interests. “I would be very surprised if Iran ordered a drone strike on Kazemi. Iran does not want to see a completely destabilized Iraq. They simply want an Iraq that is off-balance enough that they can have significant influence, both political and economic.”
Furthermore, Brig. Gen. Esmail Qaani, who succeeded Soleymani as Qods Force commander, publicly said the election results must be respected and Iraqi factions should talk to work out their differences.
Tehran and the militias are now charging that the drones were sent to kill Kazemi by the Americans, an assertion that has little resonance.
The fact remains that while Sadr’s party won more than four times as many seats as the militias, the two groups actually got almost the same number of votes. The militias’ party actually outpolled Sadr; the militias’ party drew 670,000 votes to Sadr’s 650,000.
Chatham House, a think-tank based in London explained how that happened and how Sadr’s political staff proved far more adept than the militia’s political staff.
After the 2018 elections, Iraq’s parliament adopted a new system intended to create a more transparent electoral process by removing the need for complex seat allocation algorithms.
Under the old electoral system, votes cast for a candidate could be redistributed to other candidates from the same party. So, if 5,000 votes were needed to win a seat and ‘candidate A’ received 10,000 votes, the surplus 5,000 votes would be redistributed to ensure the election of ‘candidate B’.
Under the new system, however, all 10,000 votes would stay with ‘candidate A’, resulting in a significant number of wasted votes – and this is what happened to Fateh. A failure to accurately assess the structure posed by the new legislation meant that while it received more votes as the Sadrists, it won far fewer seats.
The big problem for the militia alliance was that it is composed of multiple parties, each of which wanted to run lots of candidates, while Sadr’s organization is one compact party. As a result, the militias often ran multiple candidates in a constituency, none of which got enough votes to win while Sadr ran one candidate and won.
The Sadrists played the new system effectively, accurately anticipating support levels within each constituency and nominating the politically correct number of candidates.
They also had elaborate networks both online and on the streets, such as a location-based mobile app with details for each district, social media groups for each constituency, and dedicated personnel focused on seat acquisition as opposed to simply the number of votes, Chatham House explained.
The think-tank concluded, “While Fateh have lost some political capital, they still maintain powerful coercive capital and are likely to have a greater influence in government formation than their number of seats would suggest.”
The next challenge is to negotiate a coalition of parties with a majority in parliament to elect a prime minister. Many political analysts say it is unlikely that Sadr can pull together a governing coalition without the Iran-aligned political groups. Months of negotiations are expected before a coalition representing at least 165 members of parliament can be formed and elect a prime minister.
The United States and neighboring Arab states will be looking to see whether incumbent Prime Minister Kazemi can secure a second term.
Kazemi, a former intelligence chief who is supported by Washington, has been successful in balancing between US and Iranian interests in Iraq. He has also hosted several rounds of talks between regional rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia in a bid to ease tensions. Sadr has yet to say whether he wants Kazemi to stay on as a compromise candidate.
