Hard-fought changes to Iraqi electoral law overturned

Independent lawmakers walked out of the session in a failed attempt to prevent a quorum but then re-entered the hall to protest and to try to end the session, prior to being pushed out by security personnel.

Protests were held the following day, including in the southern cities of Hilla, Nasiriyah, Najaf, Diwaniyah and Kut.

The Imtidad Movement, a party of activists created after the 2019 protests, railed against what it called the "flagrant aggression against the representatives of the people".

"The assault against the lawmakers by the security forces and threatening them with suspension by the parliament speaker is a dangerous precedent that contradicts the principles of democracy and ethical values," the party said in a statement, noting that a case would be filed at the Federal Supreme Court against the outcome of the session.

2019 protests

Starting in October 2019, massive protests broke out across central and southern Iraq. A government was brought down, hundreds were killed, and thousands were left with injuries, many of which permanent and life-altering. Numerous activists and others were assassinated with apparent impunity.

Though many of those killed in the initial days of the protest were youths from Baghdad's impoverished Sadr City, people from all classes ended up taking part in the massive demonstrations. Many older intellectuals and others supported them in various ways.

The perpetrators of assassinations of several high-level figures have not yet been prosecuted over three years later.

Changes were made to the electoral law in response to these protests. The 2019  law, passed in 2020, used a system to allocate votes to individual candidates and not political parties. It was used in the 2021 parliamentary elections and resulted in numerous people running as independents and some winning seats.

The number of constituencies was changed on the basis of this law from 18, one district per governorate, to 83. This has now been reversed.

The electoral law is seen by some as yet another impediment not only to fair representation but also the possibility to lobby in places of power for justice in general.

It will be used for the country's provincial council elections, due to be held on 6 November and the first of its kind in a decade in the country. The date for the next parliamentary elections has not yet been set.

Sadr and Sudani

The largest bloc of MPs resulting from the October 2021 elections consisted of supporters of Shiite firebrand cleric Muqtada Sadr. These MPs resigned in mass in June 2022 after months of political bickering and the inability to form a government. They thus did not take part in the voting on the election law on 27 March.

The amendments were introduced by the government under Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, who is backed by the Coordination Framework alliance and who took office in October 2022, over a year after the elections were held. The alliance includes multiple parties that are seen as close to Iran and rivals to Sadr for influence among the country's Shiite-majority population.

Sudani previously served as human rights minister under Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, from 2010 to 2014, and prior to that as governor of Iraq's southeastern province ofMaysan province.

The amendment passed adopts the Sainte Lague party-list proportional representation system allocating seats in provincial parliaments, marking a return to a method some see as responsible for what they say is a largely unchallengeable ruling elite.

Views from the ground

One activist in the city of Amarah, the regional capital of Maysan, told Al-Majalla in early April that he had mixed feelings about the law.

"I and a group [of other activists] in Maysan, and even in other provinces, believe that the law has positive sides," since "it does not allow individual candidacy and, frankly speaking, individual candidacy produced for us MPs claiming independence and claiming affiliation to Tishreen [the 2019 protest movement] and they are in fact nothing but opportunists."

The activist said that some people had protested against the law in the weeks before it was passed but that he hopes that the law "will block the way for many opportunists because the nomination will be within a list or a party, where we can distinguish a civic-oriented party from Islamic ones" and that this would force parties not based on religion to unite and thus would be less fragmented and lead to greater potential to influence decision-making.

"We have objections to some parts of the law," however, he added, "including manual voting, which may lead to voting fraud."

A short-lived flurry of social media outcry occurred in recent weeks after a document circulated stating that the man accused of killing well-known Iraqi security expert Hisham al-Hashimi was not listed within the country's judicial prison system. Many claimed that this meant that the man had been released.

Hashimi was assassinated outside his Baghdad home in July 2020 in a killing that was caught on surveillance cameras.

Officials later stated that the man accused was not on these lists because the investigation as ongoing and that he was thus still within interior ministry or intelligence services detention centers. Hashimi's alleged killer is a former interior ministry official. His trial has been postponed multiple times over the past year for unclear reasons.

Mohamed al-Dahamat told Al Majalla during the interview in his home in Amarah that both Hashimi and his brother had been targeted to serve as examples to others in order to prevent them from continuing to protest or oppose those in power.

He said that, following Amjad's assassination, the number of people taking to the streets to protest in Maysan had dropped considerably.

Lawyer's perspective

On the assassination of demonstrators in general in Iraq, the Basra-based human rights lawyer Hassan Sarhan told Al Majalla via encrypted messaging on 3 March that "there is no seriousness on the part of the Iraqi government in holding the killers accountable".

He listed cases of people whose assassinations had been caught on video but whose perpetrators were either never arrested or were released after arrest despite many time-consuming complaints filed and efforts by families and lawyers to achieve justice for the victims.

Hashimi's case was long in the spotlight, Sarhan noted, but his assassins have not yet been prosecuted so "just imagine what happens to the young men who were unknown" at the time of their killings.

The human rights lawyer claimed that in the Basra governorate, "the governor is still using his influence to silence people and files complaints against anyone opposing" him or his actions.

Sarhan said he had defended multiple people in this period who had suffered complaints filed against them because of their criticism of the governor.

He added that using his full name in comments to the media could pose a problem for him but "what can we do? We must face them."