Iraqi parliament sends elections law back to presidency (Roundup)

Nov 23, 2009, 17:22 GMT

Baghdad - Iraqi lawmakers on Monday returned a new elections law to the Iraqi presidency without including amendments the vice president had requested when he vetoed a previous version.

Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, a Sunni Muslim, vetoed a previous version of the law on November 19, saying he wanted 15 per cent of seats in parliament to be reserved for expatriate Iraqis, most of whom are thought to be Sunnis, and members of ethnic and religious minorities.

But the Iraqi parliament on Monday evening approved a version of the law that says expatriate Iraqis will vote in the coming election as though they were in their home provinces, member of parliament Taha Dara told the German Press Agency dpa.

Sunni lawmakers left the session ahead of the vote and told reporters they expected al-Hashemi to veto the new proposal, again throwing into doubt whether the elections will take place on time.

Those lawmakers who remained to vote on the law were jubilant after it passed.

'It would be political suicide for al-Hashemi to veto the law again,' member of parliament Wael Abdel-Lafif told dpa. 'The Iraqi people are the real winners here.'

'It's possible that al-Hashemi might veto a second time,' Dara allowed. 'But I don't think this is the appropriate time for a veto.'

Lawmakers on Monday decided to use 2005 population figures from the Trade Ministry, but to augment them by 2.8 per cent per year to account for population growth, to determine how many deputies will serve in the new parliament.

The increase will be applied across the board, to every province. Sunni lawmakers said they expected the scheme to reduce their representation in parliament, in favour of the Shiite Muslim majority and Kurdish Iraqis.

The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) had objected to the use of the Trade Ministry's statistics because they resulted in a net loss of seats representing the three provinces that together make up their semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq.

The KRG threatened to boycott the polls if the number of seats from the semi-autonomous Kurdish provinces was not increased.

The Iraqi constitution mandates that the parliament should include one deputy per 100,000 Iraqis. But without a census, which some fear could force a crisis over disputed territories around the northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul by clarifying the ethnic makeup of those areas, parliament decided to use population data from a food-ration programme administered by the Trade Ministry.

Iraq had been scheduled to go to the polls on January 18, following a lengthy parliamentary tussle over setting the electoral law which will govern the ballot.

But Iraq's electoral commission said it was suspending preparations for the elections until the controversy over the veto was resolved.

'The vice president's veto has ... very much affected our preparations for the election and our schedule,' the electoral commission's Karim al-Tamimi told dpa.

'The planned date for the elections will now have to be changed,' he said.

Under the Iraqi constitution, the law must be passed 60 days before the elections take place, and elections must take place before the end of January.

Iraqi Shiite Muslims have requested that the voting take place before January 23, the beginning of the Shiite religious holiday of Arbaine.