freediver wrote on Feb 3
rd, 2016 at 6:55pm:
Local councils are not banned. They have been established within the constitution that was delivered through a national democratic process. They have already had the first council elections.
Excellent point FD - as your own wiki article said, council elections were established in 2013 - a full two years after the US left.
freediver wrote on Feb 3
rd, 2016 at 6:55pm:
They had elections under Saddam too. The 2005 elections under the US occupation were described by a wide variety of international groups as the first ever free and fair elections in Iraq. If you have any real evidence that the elections since Saddam were conducted in a similar manner, perhaps you should present that rather than constantly whining about oil contracts and drawing vague allusions.
No one is saying the elections themselves weren't free and fair, or that they were anything like Saddam's elections. Iraqis freely and fairly voted between an exclusive list of occupation yes men - having no opportunity to vote for any candidate that opposed or in any way threatened the occupation - even though that occupation systematically robbed the Iraqi people of their economic sovereignty.
Or perhaps we should go with the FD version - the Iraqi people just loved the occupation so much that they insisted on only having candidates that would defend and maintain the occupation
freediver wrote on Feb 3
rd, 2016 at 6:55pm:
This is entirely extra-constitutional, except for the requirements to run for election. It is up to the parties involved how they select candidates, and they can do it however they want. I don't think Clive Palmers rise to the leadrship of the palmer party for example was open and democratic. I have never personally been involved in any kind of preselection process.
Clive Palmer wasn't parachuted in to the country by a foreign invader who had just violently overthrew the sovereign government. Nor was he backed in his preselection by 140 thousand foreign occupying troops who were at the time slaughtering unarmed protesters outside schools and terrifying women and children by kicking down their doors in the middle of the night.