Iraqi Early Parliamentary Elections between the Protestors’ Legitimate Demands and the Existing Challenges

Abstract

Elections are a constitutional right, they considered one as the most important political rights of citizens . Therefore, it is natural for citizens, in the light of a democratic state, to practice the process of universal suffrage, which is the backbone of democracy in the light of an appropriate environment , within a fair and equitable electoral law, as we saw that the most important demand of the protesters is to be a fair electoral law, and this is considered one of their legitimate rights, because rights need guarantees, and it is taken not to given. Therefore, one of the guarantees of rights is the prevention or treatment of their violations, which necessitates the existence of mechanisms through which this is achieved.

In the time that followed 2003, the Iraqi arena witnessed many waves of popular protests, the beginning of which was about the nature of the American presence in Iraq, and it is still continuing until now.

One of the most important reasons for these protests is the faltering of the Iraqi economy, which is already suffering from many problems, resulting from the conditions of political and security instability that the country had faced for years, which had been in a state of war against ISIS for nearly five years before its outbreak .

However, it is noticeable in the October 2019 demonstrations that they were clearly different from their predecessors to show the extent of the accumulated mass discontent, these protests spread very quickly in Baghdad and most of the central and southern governorates, despite the fact that Iraq’s permanent constitution of 2005 clearly indicated the right to demonstrate by saying , the state hat it guarantees, without prejudice to public order and morals, freedom of expression by all available means, this is regulated by law, however, with a general look at all the previous demonstrations, we find that they did not develop in the way that we saw in the October 2019 protests and the developments that accompanied it which was almost influential in one way or another on the Iraqi political reality in general and the political scene in particular .