Electoral Ponies or Anbar 2005

By Dave Anderson:

Elections are a useful tool in settling disputes if the following conditions can be met:

All relevant and interested parties participate at without massively disparate participation rates

All relevant and interested parties believe that they will not be screwed if they lose

All relevant and interested parties believe that the political institutions and representation systems can and will address their interests and are legitimate

Otherwise, elections are a great way of confirming either current facts on the ground and deepening animosities and intolerable conditions, or a waste of time, money and American news cycles.

I remember the 2005 provincial elections in Iraq were supposed to be a great moment of reconiliation. The problems with that theory were multiple. However the greatest one was that the Sunni Arabs as a whole did not participate because they believed that they would be screwed no matter what and that the election authority was illegitimate and counter-productive to their interests. 4% of Anbar Province voted in December 2005. Sunni majority, but not dominant majority Dialyia Province elected SCIRI/BADR/SIIC leadership because the Sunnis did not turn out to vote at all either.

McClatchey reports that some of the same concerns that were evident in Iraq on the weakness of elections as a panacea and cornocopia of legitimacy are re-appearing in Afghanistan:

suppressed voter turnout Thursday in eastern and southern areas of the country during Afghanistan's second presidential election, officials and residents said.

Attendance was reportedly much higher in western and northern regions of Afghanistan...

He estimated that voter turnout was below 20 percent in the city [Khandahar], which is more secure than the rest of the insurgency-racked province....Noor Ahmad, a resident of Zerai District, in Kandahar province, said by telephone that his relatives told him"

Ahmad, who was speaking from Kandahar city, said the Taliban had exchanged fire with security forces in the city and that "except for two or three children, you don't see anyone in the street. The turnout is very low, perhaps less than 5 percent."

So the initial reports are minimal voter turnout in the Pashtun heartlands, high levels of voting in the Tajik and Hazara areas and massive amounts of fraud alleged. Throw in the amazingly rapid return of the donkeys with ballots from remote areas, the quick official results, the dueling claims of victory by the leading candidates, doubting that this electoral process will produce �reconciliation� or enhance governing legitimacy among populations where legitimacy is already low is the smarter choice than hoping that a magical pony will emerge from a cake spreading rainbows and joy from its mouth.