Parliament to hold crucial session on election law today

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: The Iraqi Parliament will hold a crucial session to vote on the controversial parliamentary election law and other disputed issues. The proposed changes to the law would require parties to publish full lists of candidates on ballot papers, in contrast to the current closed list system under which voters see only party names. The impasse over the law had sparked concern that the polls, slated for January 16, would have to be postponed because electoral authorities would not have enough time to organize them. The first proposal, presented on Tuesday by the UN’s special envoy to Iraq, Ad Melkert, calls for elections to be held in Kirkuk, oil-rich ethnically mixed province in Iraq’s north, at the same time as the rest of the country. It also envisages current voter records being used in the Kirkuk vote, which would favor the province’s majority Kurds, but that these would then be updated after the election. The UN’s scheme differs from one by a senior political committee made up of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, President Jalal Talabani and parliament speaker Iyad al-Samarraie. It offers three options relating to Kirkuk: postponing elections there; using voter records from 2004; or separating the province into two electoral constituencies. The Kurds have long demanded Kirkuk be incorporated in their autonomous region in the north, despite the opposition of its Arab and Turkmen communities. Kurdish regional president Massoud Barzani attacked several proposals, warning of opposition to any options giving Kirkuk special status, or involving a review of voter records in only that province. “If they want to review voter records in Kirkuk, they must also review them in all the other provinces — we will not accept only Kirkuk,” he told the Kurdish Parliament on Wednesday. The deadlock threatened the poll as the electoral law is supposed to be in place 90 days before voting takes place. Constitutionally, the election must be held by January 31. SH (S)/SR 1