DIWANIYAH IECI HEAD SHARES FINAL PROVINCIAL VOTE, THOUGHTS

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 HILLAH 000007 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 1/9/2016 TAGS: PGOV PREL KDEM IZ SUBJECT: DIWANIYAH IECI HEAD SHARES FINAL PROVINCIAL VOTE, THOUGHTS ON ELECTION RESULTS AND CONDUCT REF: HILLAH 0355 2005 CLASSIFIED BY: ALFRED FONTENEAU, REGIONAL COORDINATOR, REO, AL-HILLAH, STATE. REASON: 1.4 (b),(d) ¶1. (C) Summary: The Diwaniyah Province head of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq (IECI) told REO Al-Hillah staff that the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA, ballot number 555) won seven of Diwaniyah's eight National Assembly seats. The director attributed the result to the mobilization of Shi'a voters responding to two events that preceeded the December 15 election: Iyad Allawi's trip to the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf, and an Al-Jazeera program which aired critical views of Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani. The official opined that while sectarianism seemed to drive the electorate, he maintained that the Diwaniyah vote was fair and most complaints about the process were without merit. End summary. The UIA Landslide Explained -------------- ¶2. (C) Saad Madhloom, the Diwaniyah head of the IECI, met with REO staff on January 8. While Madhloom reported that there was no timetable for revealing the nationwide results of the December 15 election, the final results from Diwaniyah were in. He said that the UIA had won seven of Diwaniyah's eight seats, earning approximately 272,000 of the 340,000 votes cast, with the remaining seat going to the Iraqi National List (ballot number 731) of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. The third-largest bloc of votes, according to Madhloom, went to the Sarkhis, an extreme splinter Shi'a group, who earned about 7,500 votes. ¶3. (C) Events just before the election "completely" changed the results, Madhloom maintained. He argued that Allawi's December 4 trip to the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf, in which he was chased from the shrine by a shoe-throwing Sadrist mob and subsequently alleged an attempt on his life (reftel),galvanized Sadrists behind the UIA slate. The second event, Madhloom argued, was a pre-election Al-Jazeera program which aired critical views of Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani. UIA leaders across the region rallied Shi'a behind this perceived transgression, holding rallies and demonstrations which, according to Madhloom, moved even many non-religious Shi'a to favor the UIA. (Note: In a December 29 meeting, Shaykh Hussein Al-Khalidi, the Diwaniyah head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution (SCIRI),�00A;one of the UIA's constituent members, independently cited the same events in explaining what he considered to be a previously unexpected landslide UIA victory. End note.) Shi'a Solidarity on the World Stage -------------- ¶4. (C) Madhloom said that these events drove the Shi'a in Diwaniyah to vote along sectarian lines sending a message, as he characterized it, to the nation and the outside world. "If elections were one month earlier the final results would have been completely different," Madhloom avowed. "Unfortunately, it all went sectarian." ¶5. (C) This sectarianism was the root of many complaints he had investigated regarding election results since the initial announcement of the tally, Madhloom alleged. He said that even the UIA were initially surprised at how well they did, and filed the first complaint about election day practices in his province. As their victory became apparent, he said, they stopped complaining. Madhloom reported that numerous non-UIA party leaders and candidates in Diwaniyah had confided in him after the vote that they had voted for the UIA. In one instance, according to Madhloom, a non-UIA party leader who voted with 40 family members complained to Madhloom that the polling site where they voted recorded only 30 votes for his slate. After a series of discussions with the family, Madhloom related, some of the man's relatives, including his brother, reportedly revealed that they had actually voted for the 555. Postpone Local Elections to Consolidate Power? -------------- - ¶6. (C) Madhloom predicted that in the next election, Shi'a voters in South Central Iraq would vote based on the various coalitions' political programs, having already stood up for Shi'ism and shown on December 15 that they were the majority demographically. He predicted that this non-sectarian vote could happen as soon as provincial and local elections are held after the formation of a national government. For this reason, he offered, he suspected that the UIA leadership would seek to postpone local elections in order to consolidate power and insure local victories. (Note: In the December 29 meeting between REO staff and SCIRI Leader Shaykh Al-Khalidi, he mentioned his desire to postpone local elections for at least six months. End note.) ¶7. Comment: Madhloom is an experienced election official who has been with the IECI since before the January 2005 elections and a frequent REO interlocutor on many issues. While some of his observations about voting behavior have been echoed by others, his comments should be taken as both an attempt to explain the results and to defend what he sees as the integrity of the vote in his province. End comment. FONTENEAU