A boycott call and security concerns mar Iraq’s first provincial elections

Baghdad’s streets were nearly empty Monday, the main day of polling in the country’s first provincial elections in a decade, which are boycotted by an influential political bloc and marred by scattered violence and allegations of irregularities.
The vote to select new provincial council members, who in turn will appoint governors, is widely seen as a bellwether for the parliamentary election due to take place in 2025.
Initial voting, which was restricted to military and security personnel and displaced people living in camps, showed a relatively high turnout of about 67%, but turnout in Monday’s vote among the general population was widely expected to be low.
Muqtada al-Sadr, a powerful Shiite cleric and political leader who officially resigned from politics in 2022 during a lengthy deadlock over Cabinet formation, had called on his supporters to boycott the provincial elections, saying that their participation would reinforce the dominance of a corrupt political class.
Iraq’s top Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani did not issue a statement encouraging participation in Monday’s election as he usually had in the past.