Sunnis Register to Vote

Iraq’s Sunnis Register to Vote in Droves

I know the Sunnis are registering with the intention of rejecting the constitution. Good. They are involved in the political process, using “ballots, not bullets.” If the constitution does not pass in October, the transitional law provides for that.

I’m not one to bally-hoo every new soccer field and every new pledge for a few million dollars as “good news from Iraq,” but this development really is, regardless of how the media will spin it.

Voter registration soared in some Sunni Arab parts of Iraq as Sunnis mobilized to try to vote down a draft constitution they believe will divide the country, according to figures released Wednesday at the close of registration for the Oct. 15 referendum.
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The surge in voter registration in the heavily Sunni west signaled the minority’s belated entry into the country’s political process. Most Sunnis stood on the sidelines of the Jan. 30 national elections that seated the transitional government, which was charged with drafting the constitution. As a result, Sunnis were left with diminished political leverage in negotiations over the document.

This time, “we registered to defeat the constitution,” said Khalid Jubouri, a guard at a government ministry in Fallujah, a city in the volatile western province of Anbar. “This is considered fighting by word and thought. We are optimistic about the battle, and we will win it eventually.”

Registration in Anbar swelled from a tiny percentage of eligible adults in January to nearly 85 percent, said Muhammed Ibrahim, the director of voter registration centers in the province.

Ibrahim said about 600,000 of the province’s 715,000 eligible adults registered, despite pledges from al Qaeda in Iraq, an insurgent group led by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian, that anyone who took part in the voting would become a target for killing.

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