Campaign posters for upcoming parliamentary elections are displayed in central Baghdad, Iraq, Sept. 19. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)
Executive Summary
On October 10, Iraqis will go to the polls in parliamentary elections aimed at forming a new government. There is more at stake this time than in past elections because of the multiple crises facing the country: a campaign of violence and intimidation against a 2-year-old protest movement opposed to the state; an anemic economy; deficient services, including electricity shortages; and a competition for the future control of the country between Iranian-backed Shia militias on one side and some clerics, civil society, and some state institutions on the other.
These crises have caused malaise among the electorate and a low voter turnout is expected, perhaps as low as 30%, according to opinion polls. Even protesters who demanded elections be held in 2021, earlier than the scheduled 2022 elections, are vowing to boycott because they do not believe the poll will bring about political and economic reform. A low voter turnout could further delegitimize the Iraqi state in the eyes of its people. However, no matter the outcome, the elections will show that a young generation has altered the political landscape in Iraq. Even if there is no fundamental shift at the ballot box in October, Iraqi society’s demands for change are likely to be realized in the long term.
For the first time since 2005, Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has no clear political role and no formal road map to get back into politics until elections are held again in 2025. So where does this leave him and the Sadrist movement?
Since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has played a key role in Iraq’s religious and political spheres, particularly as a staunch opponent of vilayet e-faqih.
Results from Iraq’s elections show that a determined young generation can organize and win seats, no matter the obstacles placed in the way by a political system most Iraqis lost faith in long ago.
On June 29, AGSIW hosted a discussion of Geneive Abdo's recent paper examining cooperation between influential Iraqi clerics and civil society activists.
