2025 Iraqi Elections: A Process of Distortion Rather Than Reform

By Joseph Sliwa |President of the Beth Nahrain Patriotic Union and former Member of Parliament in Iraq

There is no doubt that one of the pillars of democracy is the peaceful transfer of power through the people heading to the ballot boxes to choose their representatives in a civilized manner, free from intimidation, bribery in all its forms, monopolization of power, as well as manipulation of election results. But do these standards apply to Iraq’s 2025 elections?

The electoral process in the new Iraq is undergoing a process of uglification rather than beautification. The process begins with an unjust election law, tailored to the interests of the political parties controlling the system and the “Independent” High Electoral Commission, rather than a law for all Iraqis.

The stages of this distortion include:

• Buying votes from desperate citizens struggling to find their next meal in the trash.
• Intimidation and threats against those who refuse to comply with the ruling parties’
• Pressuring employees by threatening their livelihoods.
• Manipulating electronic voting systems, where votes are fraudulently transferred from one list to another, and candidates are handpicked by those in power, turning the election into a repulsive farce rather than an attractive democratic exercise.

The quota seats allocated to numerical minorities and productive majorities, in terms of intellectual and humanitarian contributions, have been twisted by the flawed election law. Instead of restricting voting for these seats to their respective communities, as originally intended to ensure fair representation, the law allows all Iraqis to vote for minority candidates, effectively stripping these communities of genuine representation.

In the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), the two dominant Kurdish parties manipulate these seats by directing votes from military forces — the Peshmerga and Zeravani — to their preferred candidates, even if those candidates nominally belong to minority groups. In reality, these representatives serve the agendas of the ruling Kurdish parties, not their own communities.

In Shia-majority areas, a similar scheme is employed, using votes from Shia-aligned security forces to elect candidates who may bear non-Shia names but are fully aligned with Shia ruling parties.

Chaldean–Syriac–Assyrian parties have repeatedly demanded exclusive voting rights for their quota seats, through dedicated voter registries and ballot boxes, similar to systems in Iran, Armenia, and Croatia. Unfortunately, their demands continue to be ignored.

Under these circumstances, where democracy is overshadowed by political manipulation, corrupt mentalities and flawed foundations, no significant change should be expected from the upcoming elections. The process is so deeply distorted that it repels voters rather than attracting them.

The only hope for real change lies in an unprecedented political shift that could overturn the current balance of power. Otherwise, the 2025 elections will remain another chapter in Iraq’s long history of engineered democracy.

This article was originally published in Arabic by Nida al-Watana on 19 May  2025. The original can be found here.