Campaigning came to a stop around Iraq yesterday to give the country's 15 million voters an opportunity to reflect before deciding who will govern their country for the next four years.
Streets in Baghdad were eerily quiet one day before today's election, with police strictly enforcing a traffic ban. Only the noise from an occasional police siren, sporadic gunshots or US helicopters could be heard. Borders and airports have also been closed and the nighttime curfew has been extended.
Two police officers were killed and four others were injured by a roadside bomb that exploded next to an Interior Ministry patrol in northern Mosul, the city's al-Jumhouri hospital said.
Iraq's election commission said that it had registered 6,655 candidates running on 996 lists and had certified 307 political groups -- either in the form of single candidates or parties -- and 19 coalitions.
Baghdad is Iraq's biggest electoral district with 2,161 candidates running for 59 of the 275 seats in Iraq's parliament, according to the commission's executive director, Adel Ali al-Lami. There are 33,000 polling stations around Iraq.
The Interior Ministry denied reports that a tanker truck filled with thousands of blank ballots had been confiscated in a town near the Iranian border
On the last day of campaigning, a roadside bomb killed four US soldiers and gunmen assassinated a candidate for parliament in this week's election. A Shiite politician escaped injury in a bombing south of Baghdad. The US deaths in northwest Baghdad brought to at least 2,149 the number of US service members to have died since the start of the war in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
The US ambassador, meanwhile, said on Tuesday that the total number of abused prisoners found so far in jails run by the Shiite-led Interior Ministry came to about 120. The statement by Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad reinforced Sunni Arab claims of mistreatment by security forces -- a major issue among Sunnis in the election campaign.
Despite the violence, more than 1,000 Sunni clerics issued a religious decree instructing their followers to vote today, boosting US hopes the election will encourage more members of the disaffected minority to abandon the insurgency.
Three of Iraq's leading politicians agreed on Tuesday that a speedy withdrawal by foreign troops before Iraqi forces are ready would cause chaos.
But the three -- former prime minister Ayad Allawi, Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani and Sunni Arab politician Tariq al-Hashimi -- disagreed on the description of US and other foreign troops. Barzani described them as "forces of liberation," while al-Hashimi said they were occupiers.
The three leaders appeared in a debate on the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television.
Such debates are rare in the Arab world, where candidates mainly rely on rallies attended by hand-picked followers.
The US government has signed defense cooperation agreements with Japan and the Philippines to boost the deterrence capabilities of countries in the first island chain, a report by the National Security Bureau (NSB) showed. The main countries on the first island chain include the two nations and Taiwan. The bureau is to present the report at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The US military has deployed Typhon missile systems to Japan’s Yamaguchi Prefecture and Zambales province in the Philippines during their joint military exercises. It has also installed NMESIS anti-ship systems in Japan’s Okinawa
‘WIN-WIN’: The Philippines, and central and eastern European countries are important potential drone cooperation partners, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung said Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) in an interview published yesterday confirmed that there are joint ventures between Taiwan and Poland in the drone industry. Lin made the remark in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper). The government-backed Taiwan Excellence Drone International Business Opportunities Alliance and the Polish Chamber of Unmanned Systems on Wednesday last week signed a memorandum of understanding in Poland to develop a “non-China” supply chain for drones and work together on key technologies. Asked if Taiwan prioritized Poland among central and eastern European countries in drone collaboration, Lin
NO CONFIDENCE MOTION? The premier said that being toppled by the legislature for defending the Constitution would be a democratic badge of honor for him Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) yesterday announced that the Cabinet would not countersign the amendments to the local revenue-sharing law passed by the Legislative Yuan last month. Cho said the decision not to countersign the amendments to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) was made in accordance with the Constitution. “The decision aims to safeguard our Constitution,” he said. The Constitution stipulates the president shall, in accordance with law, promulgate laws and issue mandates with the countersignature of the head of the Executive Yuan, or with the countersignatures of both the head of the Executive Yuan and ministers or
CABINET APPROVAL: People seeking assisted reproduction must be assessed to determine whether they would be adequate parents, the planned changes say Proposed amendments to the Assisted Reproduction Act (人工生殖法) advanced yesterday by the Executive Yuan would grant married lesbian couples and single women access to legal assisted reproductive services. The proposed revisions are “based on the fundamental principle of respecting women’s reproductive autonomy,” Cabinet spokesperson Michelle Lee (李慧芝) quoted Vice Premier Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君), who presided over a Cabinet meeting earlier yesterday, as saying at the briefing. The draft amendment would be submitted to the legislature for review. The Ministry of Health and Welfare, which proposed the amendments, said that experts on children’s rights, gender equality, law and medicine attended cross-disciplinary meetings, adding that
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