Iraq’s election: a triumph for democracy?

Good news: democracy still works in Iraq, said Daniel Steinvorth in Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Zurich). It’s one of the few nations in the Middle East where the electoral outcome isn’t known in advance. Last week’s result was a genuine surprise: the Us-backed prime minister, Haider al-abadi, had expected to be rewarded for overseeing the expulsion of Islamic State and crushing the Kurds’ bid for independence. Yet he limped in, in third place. Instead, victory went to an alliance headed by the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-sadr, a “fierce” former militia leader whose death squads once hunted down Americans, Sunnis and secularists. Sadr didn’t run for office himself, so he can’t be PM, but he will be the key power broker. His unlikely coalition, which includes Iraq’s Communist Party and Sunni businessmen, ran on an anti-corruption ticket, and his victory is a slap in the face for Iraq’s ruling establishment.

Sadr owes it to his devoted followers, who applauded his determination to fight sleaze and turned out in force to vote, said Campbell Macdiarmid in The National (Abu Dhabi). Many live in Sadr City, the deprived working-class region of Baghdad named after his revered father, a Grand Ayatollah murdered for opposing Saddam Hussein. Sadr lacks the immense moral authority of his father, said Krishnadev Calamur in The Atlantic (New York), but won acclaim by leading the Shia resistance to the US occupation after Saddam’s overthrow (“The little serpent has left and the great serpent has come,” as he put it.) But his “Mahdi army” then turned on fellow Iraqis, fuelling a vicious sectarian war, and when it was suppressed he fled to exile in Iran. Yet now he is a different man, said Omar Sharrif in Gulf News (Dubai). After three years in exile, he was seen as a puppet of Iran, but has since distanced himself from Tehran and casts himself as a nationalist who wants Iraq to do away with sectarian strife.

Apathy was the real winner in this election, said Qassem Hussein Saleh in Al Mada (Baghdad). So profound was the disillusion with the political elite, turnout was only 44%. We Iraqis have lost faith in the political process: we are tired of seeing lawmakers grow rich while failing to provide basic services; we’re sick of being surrounded by uncollected rubbish and open sewers. Like abused dogs that no longer even try to escape their tormentors, we’ve “succumbed to despair”. In Iran, by contrast, the election result is causing real alarm, said Dominik Peters in Der Spiegel (Hamburg). The mullahs feared the growing rapprochement between Iraq and their arch-enemy Saudi Arabia: a Saudi embassy has opened in Baghdad, where the Saudis have promised to build a giant football stadium, and direct passenger flights have started between the two capitals. Sadr’s victory only makes things worse: this is a man who has denounced the influence of pro-iranian militias in Iraq and brusquely rejected an alliance with former prime minister Nouri al-maliki, a close ally of Tehran. As US influence wanes, Iraqis now see their interfering neighbour as the bigger threat.