Reversal

Good news from Iraq:

Iraq's parliament voted Wednesday to reverse last-minute changes to rules for next week's referendum on a new constitution after the United Nations said they were unfair. Sunni Arabs responded by dropping their threat to boycott the vote and promised to reject the charter at the polls.

U.N. officials welcomed the reversal, saying it helped restore integrity to the crucial Oct. 15 referendum and urged all Iraqis to participate.

At least we're going to have a fair election (well, maybe). Of course, this means that Sunnis will now gear up even more to defeat the constitution. Every bit of good news in Iraq is accompanied by bad news.

Speaking of fair elections:

Election officials in Afghanistan have sought to downplay talk of rampant fraud and vote-tampering in last month’s parliamentary and provincial balloting.

Peter Erben, head of the UN-Afghan Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) told reporters on Monday that reported irregularities seemed minor in comparison to other post-conflict elections.

According to the JEMB chief, 4 per cent of the 26,000 ballot boxes collected were put aside due to suspicion of vote-tampering and ballot-stuffing.

Not everyone agrees with Erben and Darnolf, however, and some observers maintain that voter fraud and intimidation have marred Afghanistan’s attempted exercise in democracy.

The EU election observer mission said earlier this week that it was worried about what it said were widespread reports of voter fraud and intimidation in some provinces.

"While these phenomena do not appear to be nationwide, they are a cause for concern,” said the EU mission in a statement.

Several Wolesi Jirga and provincial candidates expressed their own concerns of voter fraud to ISN Security Watch. In Kandahar province, birthplace of the Taliban in the mid-1990s, candidates said they had witnessed or heard accounts of voter bribery and other irregularities that had made them suspect the election process.

By the way, the expected winners include warlords and ex-al Qaeda leaders. And the turnout was right around 50%, proving that we are exporting American-style democracy across the globe.

Go freedom.