Canada to head Iraq vote watchdog
By BRIAN LAGHI
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
21 December 2004
Ottawa â †Canada will lead a multinational mission designed to ensure that elections in strife-torn Iraq are conducted fairly and freely, the chief electoral officer announced Monday.
Electoral officials from around the globe met in Ottawa over the past two days to examine ways to ensure that three separate votes, including one on Jan. 30, are carried out impartially.
â Å“We're trying to do as much as we can in the six weeks that remain,â ? Chief Electoral Officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley said. â Å“...We will be looking at things where a difference can really be made.â ?
Mr. Kingsley said the Iraqi commission responsible for running the election has been informed and is â Å“welcomingâ ? the establishment of the mission, to be known as the International Mission for Iraqi Elections. Both the United Nations and Iraq's electoral commission support the idea.
The panel of about a dozen or so individuals will comprise mainly independent electoral-management bodies from around the world, including Elections Canada, the United Kingdom Electoral Commission, the Federal Electoral Institute of Mexico and at least three others.
Mr. Kingsley will be responsible for establishing the secretariat, which will begin work immediately on the mission.
The body's main job will be to evaluate electoral processes in advance of the vote. It can make recommendations to the Iraqi electoral commission and will also write a report.
However, only a small group of officials will actually visit the country because of continuing security concerns, Mr. Kingsley told a news conference Monday.
The aim is to â Å“reduce to the lowest possible (number) the people who would be situated in Iraq under the present circumstances,â ? he said.
Those who do go into the country, protection will be provided by a combination of U.S.-led military forces and private security firms. The rest of the international team will operate from elsewhere in the Middle East, likely the Jordanian capital of Amman, but that location has yet to be confirmed.
Mr. Kingsley denied that the arrangement will undermine the credibility of the monitoring process.He said officials will still be able to contact groups within Iraq and assess such matters as the fairness of voter registration and the rules governing the listing of political parties and individual candidates on the ballot.
Those are things that can make a real difference in the fairness of an election, he said.
In fact, he maintained, the model adopted for this mission may turn out to be better than traditional on-the-scene observation at polling stations on election day.
"Even though there is value to electoral observation in the visual sense of visiting polls and so on . . . I've always said if I had my druthers I'd rather be doing this type of thing.â ?
The mission will also be responsible for evaluating work on a scheduled October referendum on Iraq's yet-to-be-written constitution and a vote for president scheduled for a year from now.
The mission will examine the effectiveness of 12 areas, including legal considerations, registration of voters and political parties, candidate certification, complaints procedures, voter education, media access, training of electoral workers and vote counting.
â Å“This is where real elections lie,â ? he said. â Å“This is going to be our unique contribution to the process.â ?
The process would cost $500,000 to $700,000, Mr. Kingsley said.
His announcement came the day after 67 individuals were killed in car-bomb attacks in Iraq. U.S. President George W. Bush said Monday that the Jan. 30 elections are the beginning of a long process.
Mr. Kingsley said Iraqi officials that reported to the meeting told delegates that Jan. 30 remains the date, even though the time frame is tight.
Turnout at the polls, he said, will depend on the immediacy of any security threat, but the large number of polls â †about 30,000 â †may help.
â Å“There's not going to be a lot of waiting time at those polls, and people will feel more secure in going in and out,â ? he said.
Also Monday, Canadian officials began training 500 officials who will act as observers in the coming Ukrainian elections.
The group heads to Ukraine later Tuesday.
